I’m a big fan of sharing mistakes. Especially the ones I make that are related to food. We all make mistakes, it’s part of being human. I’m sharing in the hopes you will learn from my experience and not make the same mistake.
I may have mentioned over the last few weeks that I’ve become reacquainted with my dehydrator. I’m re-learning how to store food this way plus making some delicious snacks. But not everything comes out the way I think it will.
In the manner of the book Make The Bread Buy The Butter I’d like to share something that I don’t think you should do. I mean you can, it’s possible, I just don’t recommend it.
I’ll start by telling you the what...I don’t think it’s worth it to dehydrate bone broth.
Here’s the Why
Sometimes my curiosity and meandering mind runs away with my brain. My general thought process went something like this...
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We’ve had a couple of power outages already this year. Now it’s hurricane season. There might be another power outage
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What if I want bone broth? After all, I drink 1-2 cups a day!
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Hmmm...I’ve been dehydrating so many things I bet you can dehydrate bone broth.
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This would be so much less expensive than buying it already dehydrated. Plus I’d have my bone broth which I like a lot
::Internet search on dehydrating liquids:: Yup! It’s possible
How to Dehydrate Bone Broth
I wasn’t sure how much bone broth I was going to dehydrate but I imagined a LOT. I figured I’d start with my usual 1 gallon batch. At this point it’s important for you to know that when you are dehydrating foods you cannot have a lot of fat in the mixture. Fat does not dehydrate. If there’s too much it will go rancid. So, moving forward with my big plan…
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Make one gallon of bone broth (I almost always have a “broth bag” going in my freezer)
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After straining, chill the broth to make the fat rise to the top and skim it off
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Carefully ladle 1 cup of broth at a time onto the fruit leather/liquid trays (this was so I would know what the ratio was -- 1 cup of broth equals how much dehydrated broth?). Please note I was mindful enough to ladle it all next to the dehydrator instead of carrying loaded trays across the kitchen and possibly slopping bone broth all over the floor. I give myself brownie points for that.
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Turn on the dehydrator and run until the broth is done (your mileage may vary depending on your dehydrator)
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Take the trays of dehydrated bone broth to the counter to scrape it off and into a jar
The End Result
This, dear reader, is where the fun began. First of all, dehydrated bone broth does not easily part with the tray on which it has been sitting for 10-12-14 hours. No indeedy, it chips off slowly and laboriously.
Second, it turns out dehydrated bone broth is sticky. Yup. As in I wound up wearing a fair amount of it. It would chip off the tray and somehow bits of it would magnetically attach themselves to me.
Hours later (not really but it felt like it) I finally had my bone broth. It was completely dehydrated, flaked up, and safely ensconced in a jar. Where a quick measurement indicated that approximately 1 tablespoon of dehydrated broth flakes was the equivalent of one cup of liquid broth. I’m also pretty sure I licked more than a cup’s worth off my hands when I was done.
Between the hours it took to make the broth, the hours it took to dehydrate it, and the time wrestling…um...chipping the stuff off the trays I’m not sure how many hours it was but it was too many. I make bone broth on a regular basis and will continue to do so. I do tend to store some in my freezer but given that I have other items in there there’s not a lot of room for more bone broth.
So my advice is to make the bone broth, maybe even store some in the freezer, and buy the dehydrated bone broth for longer term storage.
I did this a couple of years ago as I had been given “a lot” of bones. I needed the freezer space so I made broth and dehydrated it. It is a lot of work. One step that I did was cook the bone broth down to about 1/3 of the full strength after I had chilled it to remove the fat; it was very thick. When I dehydrated it, I used my fruit leather sheets for the Excalibur dehydrator. It peeled off pretty easily. I then put this in to my blender to pulverize it. I liked having it on hand as it worked pretty well when I didn’t have broth made or thawed. I do agree it is A LOT of work. I have not taken the time to do it again!