#sun drying

ok so you have too many vegetables and not enough time before they go soft. drying them is the fix, and it's less fussy than it sounds.

the whole thing comes down to: cut them even (3-6mm, don't eyeball it too loosely), blanch the ones that need it (carrots, beans, peas, cauliflower — skip it for onions/peppers, they're fine), spread them out with room to breathe, and dry until they SNAP. not "feels dry." snaps.

sun drying: tempting, kind of risky. vegetables don't have the sugar/acid fruit does, so they can spoil before they finish. you need real heat (32°C+) and low humidity, and even then you should pasteurize afterward — 65°C for 30 min or 71°C for 10 min in the oven — to kill off anything picked up outside.

oven method is more forgiving: 60-65°C, door propped open 5-7cm, fan nearby if you have one, rotate the trays because home ovens lie about being even. check hourly once things start shrinking, it moves fast near the end.

if you're doing this weekly (1-2kg+), just get a dehydrator. steady heat, even airflow, frees up your oven, done.

now the part people don't expect: turning this into an actual business is a different animal. commercial dryers hold consistent temp/humidity across hundreds of kg at once. FSSAI caps moisture at 20% for dehydrated veg products, powders can't be clumpy, and you need a full license (not just registration) plus batch testing before anything hits a shelf. equipment + pre-treatment + packaging can run several lakh rupees before your first batch even ships.

silver lining: the segment is growing 8-10% a year in India, and PMFME offers a 35% capital subsidy (capped at ₹10L per unit) for small food processing setups, which softens the equipment cost a lot.

common ways to ruin a batch, for the record: crowded trays, skipping blanching, drying too hot (crispy outside, soggy inside — worst outcome), packing things away before they're fully cool, and ignoring humidity in storage even after a perfect dry.

My experiences with mushroom-drying so far....

So, there are, apparently, a few things which make this easier. Of course these are only my experiences and there are many factors to consider. Other people may have other results, so this is not the ultimate wisdom on the subject.

Also, I’m sun-drying only. Oven-drying or drying over a steam device may yield other results. I’ve tried oven-drying once and decided that it needs wayyyy too much energy. Basically in order to get a crisp, dry, hard mushroom you have to leave the oven on low temperature for at least 8 hours, and even then you’re more likely to just get roast mushroom or just a soft, slimy, smelly cap.

Anyway, so here’s what I’ve come to:

1. Take only fresh mushrooms. This is important. Pluck them right out of the earth. Whether you take just the cap or the whole fruit body is not important, both work, but they have to be fresh. Picture #1 top left are three that were already fallen or close to falling. While one of them dried up partially, two others just rottet and turned slimy and VERY smelly.

2. Take youngish specimen. The older, the more likely that they’re already rotting on the inside, and that there will be fly eggs. That’s not to say the young ones don’t have fly eggs but at least not so many. Take the ones that aren’t baby stadium anymore (i.e. egg- or ball-shaped) but whose cap has already started to unfold and is vertical, or very slightly curving downwards like a bell (this is important as due to the heat during drying, they will continue to “grow” a little and a bell-shaped shroom will straighten out its cap).

3. Don’t take too big (large) ones. Picture #2 top right, the parasol was medium size and still rather young, it dried nicely. Picture #3 the huge parasol just got stinky and had to be thrown out.

4. Fly agarics and russulae seem to work best. Russulae dry to a really hard surface, almost like old leather. Fly agarics turn an amazing shade of golden red.

5. The caps will shrink and wrinkle and split and curve in on themselves. This is normal. I haven’t yet found a way to prevent it and I’m not sure there is one.

6. Re: Sun-drying. The sills of old double-windows work best. If you can, choose a south-facing side (this applies to Northern Europe, apparently. Places like Arizona or Florida, I envy you!). Alternatively, an old fish tank or something like that would work, too. Advantage of double-windows is that there’s still enough air - and you’ll need air. Don’t put the shrooms in a closed container. If you use a fish tank or whatever other glass container, leave it open/don’t use the lid, but place a kitchen towel or a baking sheet on top and secure with a rubber band or a bit of duct tape. What also works is the rear window of your car. If you don’t have a lot of shrooms and it’s really really warm, just put them into a small container and place at the back of your car (and park it in the sun). The two in picture #2 were dried like this - basically baked in the sun. Only do this with very fresh examples, right away, and when the sun is strong enough - otherwise you might end up with a smelly car and a horde of flies...

7. For the first day and night, I put them onto a layer of thick paper towels. This sucks up all the remaining fluids. Also, be aware that you’ll have lots of crawlers coming out from all the hidden nooks and crannies of the shroom. Mainly tiny worms/larvae, but also small bugs and flies. If they’re still alive the next time you check, can just throw them outside with the paper towel. If not, flush the whole thing down the toilet. Needless to say that because of the crawlers, your container should be as far away as possible from children/pets and from the area you frequent most (living room etc). Usually the crawlers don’t get very far, but sometimes depending on the temperature they’re fast - especially fly eggs can hatch within a day.

8. After one day and night, I replace the paper towels with a baking sheet, glossy side up. You can also put this in a cardboard box and put the shrooms into this.

9. Check regularly. If anything smells funny, rots, or oozes fluid, throw it away.

10. Be aware that there’s only a very limited time window for this. Where I live, October is usually wet and cold, so that’s not the best of conditions. Even if it’s sunny, the sun is usually not as warm anymore as during her high-time in summer. Hence the glass container/windows, because glass enhances the sunrays. The ones in the picture have been drying in the sun for 2 days and would still need another day or so, but today is wet and cold...

If anyone has anything to add, please feel free.

As an Australian I find this post extremely assuming in a similar way to those ‘I forgot what stingrays were called and named them sea pancakes” posts

We call them Hills Hoists and they are So common here that they are both a visual metaphor for Aussie Suburbia and according to wikipedia was named a National Treasure. I have several memories of my dad spotting on in a friends garden and solemnly nodding “Ah a hills hoist, when I was a kid…” as well as them showing up on lists of stereotypical Aussie things we were shown in Primary school; Vegemite, Kangaroos, Pavlova, Kolas, Hills Hoists

#I'm not laughing at OP#i just find it funny#that something ive been repeatedly told is#so aussie is completely unknown overseas and mentioned as a slightly bizarre thing with no mention of australia#also i would not be surprised if the aussie legacy was completely made up by pop culture here#apparently we invented them#but technically hills hoist is a brand name made generic so its possible its just the brand was aussie

I had never heard of this type of laundry line being particularly Australian, as it happens! Nor have I heard of that brand name. Wikipedia backs you up though.  

I grew up with a big family so we had one of these-style clotheslines, and also the more typical long-rope-on-a-pulley-between-two-posts style. Those are what you see in old movies about the prarie, but are less common here-- to use them really effectively, you have them on a slope so the far end goes way out over a long drop, and also you need these specialized little spacers, long c-shaped brackets with a little wheel just inside each curve, so that you clip them on the line and they roll along keeping the upper and lower line from sagging apart. Then you hang laundry on the lower line, and wheel it out on the pulley so you stand in one spot and it goes out to hang freely on the hillside? There’s one I pass at 80 mph on the Thruway every time I make the drive to the farm or back, it’s off a second-storey deck of a farmhouse, and goes a good 100 feet up a hill to a giant pole, and the farmer uses it in all seasons, and it always lifts my spirits a little to see #1 what a great laundry line it is-- that’s like, three jumbo loads of laundry, 20 feet up in the air, how amazing-- and #2 how dedicated this person is to air-drying their jeans. There’s always, like, six pairs of jeans on that line-- that is definitely a family of farmers. 

My parents have one of these, and the pulley is a little rusty, and in the summer there’s a catbird that mimics the squeak of the rusty pulley and sometimes panics me when home alone into thinking a burglar has come to steal the sheets off the line. But it’s definitely a catbird. 

Wikipedia, by the way, also confirms that there is controversy in North America about the use of clotheslines, including a Right To Dry movement. 

Personally, I am delighted with my new clothesline, because it does mean a lot less walking back and forth to hang up clothes, and also the length of my yard is not quite enough to hang up a full load and so it’s nice to have the extra room on the lines.

With advancements in technology, drying is no longer a process that is restricted to the outdoors and subject to the amount of sunlight one receives. Drying has evolved and given birth to many different types; from sun-drying to equipment drying to solar drying and pasteurization. Watch the process of fruit drying and pay close attention to the processes as well as the machinery used!

Learnt something you didn’t know of? We hope so! ☺️ Our next post will tell you more about another preservation method.

❄️ *shivers* ❄️