dehydrated cheese slices

My family likes to enjoy a delicious slice of cheese served with a tasty selection of slices of homemade bread. The problem is that when we buy the cheese in bulk at our local SAM’s Club, it’s often too much to finish. As a result, we waste a good part of the product. To counteract this problem, I decided to dehydrate the remainder for use in other foods at a later date.

After some thought and effort, I realized that the process was not completely different from other drying procedures that I had done in the past. To start, I took the cheese and cut it into extremely thin individual layers. I soon found that the thinner I cut the cheese, the faster it dehydrated. When slicing, try to get slices of the same thickness to allow the cheese to dehydrate evenly.

When placing the individual layers of cheese on the dehydrator plates, leave enough space between the different slices so that they do not touch each other. If you are dehydrating any type of soft cheese like ricotta or perhaps cottage cheese, cover the tray of the food dehydrator with a piece of plastic wrap. Next, spread a thin layer of your chosen soft cheese on top of the plastic wrap.

While the dehydration process is taking place, turn the cheese slices every hour to remove any fat that may have come from the cheese itself. Continue drying the cheese slices in your food dehydrator until completely dry. After the cheese has fully dried, it will exhibit a firm, hard texture while turning dark in color. Above all, make sure the cheese is completely dry before removing it from the dehydrator.

When you are done dehydrating the cheese, set it aside for a while to cool down properly, after which you should place the dried slices in a kitchen food processor and grind to a fine powder. Store cheese powder in a tightly closed airtight container. I usually put it in a regular mason jar along with an oxygen absorber and put the lid on it. Within a short period of time, the lid will open and the can will be sufficiently sealed.

Several nifty little tricks you can do with this technique are to make your own cheesy pasta flavor. Carefully dehydrate and blend one or, if desired, several types of cheese in combination to create your own individual cheese powder mix. If you discover that your cheese has absorbed moisture while in storage, if it smells bad, or has developed an undesirable appearance, you should discard it immediately.

There you have it all in a few words, the simple and easy way to dehydrate cheese. Now you are bound to become the envy of all your surviving friends.

For the parish of José

Copyright @2011 Joseph Parish

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