With an over abundant harvest of kale, silverbeet, chard and spinach in my garden I’ve turned to dehydrating and powdering.
I really don’t like wasting food, as you can tell.
I have a home dehydrator which I enjoy using for a range of things including herbs, fruit slices and fruit pastes. My vegetable patch however has gone nuts lately and my dehydrating enthusiasm has stepped up a notch. When the freezer is full and you’ve bottled enough preserves, dehydrating needs to be on your to-do list I figure.
Some vegetables take 12 hours (such as my recent batch of dehydrated cauliflower florets) but leafy greens can take around 5 hours, depending on your model and its function settings.
Leafy greens retain their vibrant colour and come out crunchy and brittle, just the texture you are after. While you can scrunch up the leaves and pack into jars so you can fit more in, I love powdering them instead. I have a ‘nutra-bullet’-type unit that blitzes them to smithereens in seconds.
What Leafy Greens Work Well Dehydrated?
Think traditional greens such as chard, silverbeet, kale, spinach… then go a little wider. Celery and radish leaves, finely chopped cauliflower and broccoli greens, carrot and beetroot leaves, bok choy, and also pea leaves or pea shoots are also great to dehydrate down into powder.
For stemmy greens (stalks or very fleshy stems), remove the leaves from the stalks. You don’t need to throw the stalks away, in fact you can dehydrate them too, however as they are thicker it is best left for another batch as they will require a longer dehydration time.
How to use Powered Greens
Powdering dehydrated greens makes them very easy to store in an airtight container as they reduce down to a powder. You can use green powder in stocks, casseroles, sauces, dressings, smoothies, pasta sauces, sprinkled on eggs and even sneak in a spoonful into baking (brownies are great as the chocolate brown overrides the green so it’s not so noticeable to the eye).
A tablespoon of green powder could equate to 1-2 cups of fresh leaves, depending on the vegetable, how tightly the leaves were packed, and how finely the dried leaves are ground.
For home dehydrating, keeping the temperature around 40–50°C and storing the dried greens in airtight containers away from light will help preserve as much nutrition as possible.
What is Their Nutritional Value Once Dehydrated?
Dehydration doesn’t make leafy greens “nutritionally empty.” Most leafy greens contain mostly water (approximately 90-95%). During the dehydration process they will lose much of their water content and some of the most heat-sensitive vitamins too (folate and vitamin C), however they will retain fibre, most minerals, Vitamin K and many beneficial plant compounds.
Making Powered Vegetable Greens
Ingredients
- Any edible leafy greens you can get your hands on: silverbeet, spinach, beetroot leaves, carrot tops, kale, chard, herbs etc
Method
- Hold the stem in one hand at the base then run your fingertips up the stem with the other. The green leaf will come away easily leaving the bare stem. Reserve the stem for something else (like my Green Stem Soup which I will post shortly).
- Wash the leaves well in cold water to remove any bugs or dirt.
- Spin leaves in a leaf-spinner (you can pick up a lettuce spinner for a few dollars in the second hand store) to remove excess water, or drain well, or wrap in a tea towel.
- Tear leaves into small pieces then place in the trays of the dehydrator. Usually contents shouldn’t overlap although as there is so much water content in these leaves it isn’t so imperative as they will shrink quickly anyway.
- Turn on dehydrator (approx 5+ hours, depending on your dehydrating method) and ensure they are absolutely crispy before you contemplate storing. Leaves should crumble when pinched between your fingertips. If in doubt, dehydrate for longer.
- Transfer to a kitchen blitzer (food processor, etc) and pulse until leaves turn to powder or resembling fine tea leaves.
- Transfer to an airtight container.
