My family likes to enjoy a delicious cheese slices served with a tasty selection of homemade bread slices. The problem is that when we buy the cheese in bulk at our local SAM’s Club, it is often too much to finish. As a result of that, we waste a good part of the product. To counteract this problem, I decided to dehydrate the rest to use in other foods at a later date.
After some thought and effort, I realized that the process was not entirely different from other drying procedures that I had done in the past. To start with, I took the cheese and cut it into extremely thin individual layers. I soon discovered that the thinner I cut the cheese, the faster it dehydrated. When cutting it, try to obtain slices of equal thickness so that the cheese dehydrates evenly.
When placing your individual layers of cheese on your dehydrating plates, allow enough space between the various slices so that they are not touching each other. If you are dehydrating any type of soft cheese like ricotta or perhaps cottage cheese, cover the food dehydrator tray with a piece of plastic wrap. Next, spread a thin layer of your chosen soft cheese over the plastic wrap.
While the dehydration process is taking place, turn the cheese slices every hour to dry out any fat that may have appeared on the cheese itself. Continue drying the cheese slices in your food dehydrator until they are completely dry. Once the cheese has completely dried, it will exhibit a firm, tough texture while taking on a dark-type color. Above all, make sure the cheese is completely dry before removing it from your dehydrator.
When you’re done dehydrating the cheese, set it aside for a while to cool properly, after which you need to place the dried slices in a kitchen food processor and grind them into a fine powder. Store powdered cheese in a tightly sealed airtight container. I usually put it in a regular mason jar along with an oxygen absorber and put the lid on. In a short period of time, the lid will open and the can will be sufficiently sealed.
Several little tricks you can do with this technique are to make your own pasta cheese flavor. Gently dehydrate and mix one or, if desired, several types of cheese in combination to create your own individual powdered cheese mix. If you find that your cheese has absorbed moisture while in storage, smells bad, or has developed an undesirable appearance, you should dispose of it immediately.
There you have it all in a nutshell, the simple and easy way to dehydrate cheese. You are now destined to become the envy of all your surviving friends.
By Joseph Parish
Copyright @ 2011 Joseph Parish
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