Soooo.... I bought a food dehydrator....

It’s only a cheapy, 40 bucks on eBay or something, but it’s a start hey? And if I use it enough to warrant the extra cost, well THEN I’ll upgrade. Simples :-)

So far, (It only arrived 2 days ago) it’s been used all weekend. Could be just a ‘new toy’ thing though. We’ll see.

The first night, I’d gotten some chicken breasts and decent bacon to test her out. The first breast I sliced up and marinated in 1/2 a bottle of Teriyaki sce, 1/3 bottle of Worcestershire sce, 8 shakes of green Tabasco sce, 6 grinds of pepper medley and 6 shakes of garlic flakes. Hey, no need to be 100% technical, we’re still experimenting right! I let that marinate while I did the bacon and the other breast.

Oooooooh godDAMN..... candied bacon :-O THIS was to prove.... interesting, to say the least. We all looooooove bacon right? And if you don’t..... you’re WRONG! 

OK, so bacon.... Due to the Doc’s saying I’ve got high cholesterol, I’ve cut back on my bacon consumption. 

Sorta. 

Back in the day, I’d buy whole rashers, cut it in half, slice the rind off and fry that desperately as a snack while I fried the main part of the bacon. But now, I just buy the eye part - little fat, no rind, no fun BUT better for my health and I still get my bacony goodness. Win/win as far as I can see.

Anyway, I trimmed the small amounts of fat and gristle off each eye, and sliced each one into 4-5 slices. As I did each eye, I popped it into a freezer bag that had about 250 grams of brown sugar in it. Now... this proved to be.... problematic to say the least. Firstly, I didn’t figure on the sugar kind of... melting and becoming a sugary ‘goop’. This ‘goop’ made transferring the coated sliced bacon into the trays. LUCKILY I’d had the foresight to cut liners out of baking paper to help making cleaning easier. I will admit I was a bit careless, and instead of removing any excess ‘goop’ I just let it drip into the bag, then popped it onto the lined tray. THIS looked prettyish, but I also didn’t consider the possibilities of the excess dripping into the base of the dehydrator.... 

Whoops. 

Now THAT took a bit of cleaning!

The other breast I didn’t marinate, just left it raw. Yeah, risky I know, but it’s primarily a dog treat experiment. And I sliced this one last, putting it on the tray and straight into the dehydrator. As it was semi frozen, it makes slicing it easier, it was still a bit cold at this stage.

As you can see by the pics.... it’s turned out pretty well. All tasted good, the dog hasn’t died (nor have I) and over the rest of the weekend I tried some vegies - mushroom, capsicum, tomatoes and onion.

At the moment, I’m dehydrating some more candied bacon - with a more controlled amount of sugar (100 grams this time. And done in a mixing bowl) and some raw bacon. Although that might need an extra 12 hours. We’ll see.