Dehydrating onions

Boy howdy, did the onions do well this year in the garden.

Now that it’s time to harvest, I’m tasked with preserving this abundance. To this end, I decided to dehydrate most of them. Because there are so many onions, I’m harvesting just one bed at a time.

I trimmed off all the greens…

…and weighed out 4.5 lbs., which I knew from previous experience is about all my six-tray dehydrator can handle at a time.

Then I started chopping the onions, a very weepy process.

Spreading the onions on the trays. I made sure to use the mesh screen inserts in the trays so smaller pieces wouldn’t fall through.

Then — and this is no joke — I put the dehydrator outside. Believe me, the smell of onions would have knocked us out of the house otherwise. As it was, the entire yard smelled of onions during the drying process.

The booklet that came with the dehydrator suggested eight hours of drying at 125F. After some experimentation, I bumped it to 135F for ten hours, rotating the trays at the five-hour mark. But still, the onions felt a bit leathery as I peeled them off the mesh. So I consulted my faithful food preservatin bible…

…which recommended pasteurizing the dried onions at 175F for 10 minutes or so. I upped this to 15 minutes. I was delighted with the results. The pasteurization process took away the leathery texture and made the onions nice and brittle.

Four and a half pounds of onions yields a quart and a half of dried onions.

As I type this, I’m on my third batch of onions and have finished one garden tire’s worth of harvest. I’m in for a long haul of drying onions, but when this is all finished, I will have gallons of dehydrated produce. God bless harvest time!