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Today, we're going to continue our Sun Oven Cooking Essentials series,
talking about how you can use your Sun Oven for a solar dryer or a solar
dehydrator. In addition to being able to cook with the Sun Oven, it does
make a wonderful solar dryer/dehydrator.
When you dry in the Sun Oven, what you do just a little bit different than
when you cook, when you cook we latch these latches tight to form a totally
airtight seal to trap the air inside the Sun Oven, and it gets hot and goes
for cooking. When we're drying, we want temperatures someplace between 110
and 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, to keep the temperature from getting too hot and also to give the moist
air a chance to escape, we just take one of the Sun Oven latches, we turn
it in, and we rest the glass on top of it. You notice now there's a gap of
air that's approximately a half an inch between the glass and the black
gasket. By allowing the air to escape, it keeps it from getting to hot, as
well as gives the moist air a place to go.
A Sun Oven is wonderful for drying. You can use it for things like sun-
dried tomatoes or vegetables or fruits, or even drying jerky, so you can
use it for a variety of different things. Depending on what you're drying
and how often you refocus it, it really depends then on how long it takes.
Today, we're going to be trying some sun-dried tomatoes. They'll probably
take four, four and a half hours. We'll probably refocus the Sun Oven one
time during that time because we want to keep it at a lower temperature. We
don't put it in the full sunlight to prevent it from getting too hot when
we're drying. One of the nice things is that later we'll be trying some
jerky, some beef jerky.
When we make the jerky in the Sun Oven it will take more than one day.
Overnight, we don't have to take anything out of the Sun Oven. We just
latch these latches tight overnight. When we latch the latches tight
overnight, that forms an airtight seal which suspends the drying process
overnight. But it also keeps bugs from getting into the food. Then the next
day it can be put out and allowed to finish the drying.
So the Sun Oven dehydrating kit does come with a set of three racks that
will fit right on the leveling tray and it comes with a roll of parchment
paper. What I did earlier is we rolled out the parchment paper and cut it
into pieces. We took the tomatoes and we set them on the tray here and then
what we'll do is open the sun oven, open the glass door, and put the racks
inside so that all three racks will then be able to dry in the sun oven.
So, you can see now that the three racks are here. They're stacked up, and
we'll take this glass. Just so you can see it, I'm going to move the
reflectors. Normally we'd just leave the reflectors open, but now you can
see we've got the latch open. We have the tomatoes inside.
Now, the reason it's important to have a backup method of dehydrating is
that if you have an electric dehydrator at the time your garden is ready to
be harvested, if you'd gotten your Sun Ovenfor emergency preparedness and
there was a time when there was not any electricity, you don't want to let
whatever is in your garden spoil.
So, you can then solar dry it or dehydrate it and use it even without
electricity. So, it's a really worthwhile addition to have and just a
byproduct of things that you can do with your sun oven.
Well the tomatoes have been in about four or four and half hours. Right now
the temperature in the Sun Ovenis about 140 degrees Fahrenheit, which just
is ideal for making sun-dried tomatoes. As you can see, they've been
completed just using the sun. They'll be delicious to eat now or we can
save them, put them in the jars and store them for long-term food storage.
So either way it's a fantastic way to use your Sun Ovenas a solar dryer or
dehydrator.
Well, now we have the completed jerky. Jerky takes generally a day, day and
half to complete. What we did was left it in the first day, got as far as
we could. Overnight, we just latched the latch tight, left the jerky in
overnight, set it out the second day and allowed it to finish. So we'll
have some delicious jerky either now or we can preserve it for a long
period of time.