How to Dehydrate Spiraled Summer Squash Pasta Noodles

My in laws gifted me with several summer squashes from their gigantic and prolific vegetable garden.  I’m the only human in the house who likes summer squash and quickly found that there is only so much I can eat day after day without getting sick and tired of eating homegrown summer squash.

Which I suspect is why my in laws gave them to me in the first place.

I need to figure out how to preserve the summer squash for later this year when it is out of season. I don’t have the space to freeze it and can’t can it. That leaves my  favorite lazy way to save summer vegetables – dehydrate it!

And since I jumped on the spiralzied vegetable pasta bandwagon like everyone else, I’m going to make dehydrated summer squash zoodles to use in place of whole wheat pasta when the mood strikes.

Pin this tutorial for later!



You will need:


Summer Squash

Vegetable Spiralizer Slicker  = I bought a pencil sharpener style vegetable spiralizer spiral slicer similar to the one sold on Amazon here (affiliate links in this post for your convenience.) It doesn’t take up much room in my kitchen and it’s pretty good for making meals for one person.

Pot of water and a stove – to blanch the summer squash

Slotted spoon

Dehydrator



Make it:

1. Wash and spiral cut the summer squash in the spiral vegetable pasta cutter.  The thinner the slice, the better the vegetable will dry.

Spiralizer time!

2. Add the summer squash zoodles to the pot of water on he stove and heat them until they start to simmer. Then remove the pot from the stove (called blanching.) The idea is to slightly heat the vegetable, not to cook it all the way.

Blanching will encourage the summer squash noodles  to dehydrate more quickly and evenly. It is not crucial if you don’t blanch the summer squash (actually it is a small miracle I remember to do for this post.) although it might take a little longer for the summer squash to dehydrate completely.

3. Spread the spiral cut summer squash evenly and in a single layer on your dehydrator trays. If the squash pasta overlaps, its may take longer to dry.

I have a Nesco food dehydrator and I can’t recommend it enough! You can learn more about it here.

 
4. Dry the spiraled summer squash noodles in the dehydrator at 140 degrees (F ) for 5 to 10 hours until all of the water is removed from the vegetables. I usually let my dehydrator go overnight since our humid weather sometimes makes dehydrating summer squash take longer than the recommended time in my dehydrator's instruction book. Your mileage may vary on this.

5. Store the dried summer squash pasta in an air tight container. I repurpose an empty jars to hold my dehydrator experiments.

 The dried summer squash noodles look a little odd but will look like normal veggie past noodles after you rehydrate them by soaking them in water for a bit before you use them.

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