More and more people are rec-ognizing the importance offood quality in their daily

lives. The freshest, ripest, tastiest and mostnutritious food comes from our own gar-dens or local farmers. But because thesehigh quality fruits and vegetables are sea-

sonal, you have access to them for only afew weeks or months each year.

What do you plan to eat the rest ofthe year? Will you rely on industrial foodsgrown by strangers from all over theworld and shipped thousands of miles?With increasing interest in healthy eat-

ing, sustainable local food suppliesand self-reliance, many people arediscovering the benefits of a solarfood dehydrator.

Solar food drying is more than acuriosity or hobby — it’s an idealapplication for solar energy. Solar ra-diation passes through the clear glasstop of a wooden dehydrator box,then the heat trapped by the boxdries the food. The dehydrator alsomay have an absorber plate inside,which indirectly heats your food andcreates a convection current of airthat enters a vent at the bottom ofthe dryer (shown on opposite page).The cool, fresh air that enters thevent heats up, circulates through thedryer, then exits through a vent atthe top. As your food dries, moisture

66 MOTHER EARTH NEWS August/September 2006

ApplesApplesPlumsPlumsTomatoesTomatoesBasilBasil

Build a SOLAR FOOD

DehydratorPreserve yourharvest with free energy

from the sun.By Eben Fodor

is carried away with the hot air. But dosolar food dryers work well? Are theypractical? Yes, but first let me put thistopic in the context of creating a healthyand sustainable food supply.

EAT IN SEASON YEAR-ROUNDFood preservation is the key to extend-

ing the summer’s precious bounty of lo-cally grown produce throughout the year.If you’re like me, you would prefer amethod that’s easier and requires less en-ergy than canning.

Freezing is commonly viewed as themost convenient preservation method, butfreezers require a constant source of elec-tricity. Your food will be vulnerable topower outages and mechanical failures,and freezer burn will limit the storage lifeof most foods to about six months.

Drying is an excellent method of foodpreservation that maintains a high level offlavor and nutrients, while providing aconvenient, compact, easy-to-store supplyof your favorite produce. Electric fooddryers work fine, but I don’t care for theconstant noise, heat and odors they add tomy house. Electric dryers also take awayvaluable counter space for weeks on endand can attract ants and other pests. Theelectricity to run them costs about a dollar

a load. The convenience of electricity doesnot compare to the satisfaction of dryingfood with free solar energy.

Disenchanted with electric drying, Ibegan experimenting with solar drying.With a background in engineering and so-lar energy, I soon designed and built myfirst solar dehydrator. I was delighted towatch the sun quickly dehydrate my or-ganic fruits and veggies. It worked evenbetter than I had hoped, drying largebatches of food in one to two days. I driedmy entire surplus of garden and orchardproduce, leaving nothing to waste. The fol-lowing year, I grew a larger garden so Icould dry even more food.

GOT SUN?If you’re wondering whether solar drying

could be right for your location, considerthat I live in Eugene, Ore., at a latitudeequivalent to Bangor, Maine. We receivelots of rain, but fortunately, we also receiveenough sunshine during the summer andfall harvest seasons to successfully dry all ourcrops with solar energy. If you can get twodays of sunshine in a row with some regu-larity, solar food drying will work for you.

But for those times when the sun is hid-ing, a backup heating system still can help.I added 200-watt light bulbs as heatingelements so I could finish drying my pro-duce any time the weather turned cloudy.

kitchen&garden

The author and hisSunWorks solar fooddryer. Left: Warmtemperatures insidethe food dryer createa convection currentthat circulates airthrough the dryer.

The author and hisSunWorks solar fooddryer. Left: Warmtemperatures insidethe food dryer createa convection currentthat circulates airthrough the dryer.

Dried foods store well in airtight containersand will keep for up to one year.Dried foods store well in airtight containersand will keep for up to one year.

Hot, moist air exits throughscreened top vents

Fixed side vent

Food screens

Absorber plate

Sunlight

Cool, fresh air enters throughscreened opening at bottom

www.MotherEarthNews.com August/September 2006 67

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GOOD DESIGNSA solar food dehydrator can be made in

many designs, ranging from the simple tothe complex, and from small to large. Forthe home gardener, a good solar food dehy-drator has these qualities:• It dries food quickly — on par with a

good electric food dryer.

• It has venting controls that allow foreasy adjustment of drying temperatureand airflow.

• It’s easy to load, unload and clean.• It’s easy to set up and put away, with

little or no assembly.• It’s relatively compact and lightweight

for portability.

• It’s weather-resistant and keeps yourfood dry in the event of rain.

• It has sturdy and durable constructionfor a long life of outdoor operation.

• It’s pest-proof, and all vent openingsare screened.

• The food trays are made from durable,nonstick and food-safe materials.Now that you know the basics about

solar food dryers, where do you go for de-signs? Surprisingly, you won’t find muchuseful information on the Internet. If yousearch, you will find plans for solar dryersmade from cardboard and duct tape. Skipthese and stick with the handful of highquality dehydrators that meet my criteria.My book The Solar Food Dryer provides in-formation on some of the better designsand includes complete plans for buildingthe SunWorks dehydrator I designed(shown on Page 67).

The easiest solar food dryer to build isa “hot box,” a design in which the food isenclosed and protected in a box with a

kitchen&garden

68 MOTHER EARTH NEWS August/September 2006

This simple solar hot box dries food bycapturing solar radiation, which raises theinterior temperature of the box.

Glass or old window

Drying tray

Vent holes in bottom andsides should be screened

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clear covering on top (shownon opposite page). Screenedholes should be in the bot-tom and sides, so warm,moist air can exit the dryer.

To increase airflow and ef-ficiency, you’ll have to modi-fy the simple hot-box design.Many high-performance de-signs are based on the strategyof separating the two func-tions of a solar food dryer:gathering heat and drying thefood. The New Mexico dehy-drator shown below illustratesthis approach.

My design, the SunWorks,integrates the solar collectorand food drying cabinet into acompact configuration, whichuses both direct heating (likethe solar hot-box dryer) andindirect heating from the ab-sorber plate. The airflow is optimized foreven drying, and ventilation is achieved bynatural convection (see diagram, Page 67).

HOW TO USE A SOLAR DRYERYou don’t need to be a solar whiz to ope-

rate a solar dehydrator — just place it in asunny spot oriented to the south and load

it with food. If you will be around duringthe day, you can speed drying by occasion-ally repositioning the dryer to track the sunas it moves across the sky. Many foods willdry in one day of sunshine. Wet foods suchas tomatoes or pears will require a secondday. They should be dry enough after thefirst day to stay in the dehydrator overnight.

kitchen&garden

Food Drying FavoritesFruits: apples, apricots, bananas, blueber-ries, grapes (seedless), peaches, pears,plums and strawberries.

Vegetables: broccoli, carrots, cauliflower,corn, green beans, onions, peas (sweet, inpod), peppers, potatoes, summer tomatoes,zucchini and other squash.

Mushrooms and herbs are excellent, too!

The New Mexico solar food dryer design combines direct and indirect solar heating.Direct sunlight heats the racks of food in the upper part of the dryer, while thecorrugated metal absorber plate at the bottom of the dryer promotes indirect heating bycreating a convection current of hot air that travels upward through the racks of food.

Are You Ready?What Would You Do?Try to imagine what it would belike to live for a week without

food or water.

How would you answer yourchildren when they say

“I’m hungry”

Nobody truly likes to think about it, but it can happen. A major disruption in food

and water provisions. Bird Flu, Terrorist attack, and

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Disaster and emergency kits aretools that are going to help youmaximize your comfort level in

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or visit our website at www.readyreservefoods.com

Circle #74; see card pg 137

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Always start with food that is at its peakfreshness and ripeness — simply wash, sliceto your desired thickness and place in yoursolar dryer. I get great results without anyblanching or pre-treatments. The driedfood consistently looks and tastes great.The flavor is better than anything I find insupermarkets, and it’s free of sulfites (a sul-

fur-based preservative) and other additivesfound in commercial dried foods.

Most people think about drying food inAugust, when they can’t keep up with thesupply from their gardens. But there isabundant solar energy in the spring for dry-ing. In May or June, you can start capturingearly season crops such as peas, blueberries

and strawberries. Then you’ll be ready foryour summer and fall bumper crops ofbeans, plums, peaches, apples and squash.

As you think about how much fun youwill have with a solar food dryer, considerthat by preserving and storing produce, youcan expand your garden and grow more ofthe things you’d like to enjoy year-round,such as tomatoes. A solar food dehydrator isa great way to maintain a nutritious andtasty supply of high quality, locally grownfoods all year long. A good dehydrator willproduce outstanding results, along with thesatisfaction of saving energy and money byharnessing the power of the sun. d�

Eben Fodor is the author of The SolarFood Dryer, a MOTHER EARTH NEWS “Book forWiser Living” from New Society Publishers.To order, see Page 127. He is an avid or-ganic gardener with a background in solarenergy and engineering. For more informa-tion, visit www.solarfooddryer.com.

70 MOTHER EARTH NEWS August/September 2006

Cooking with Dried FoodMost dried vegetables can be quickly and easily rehydrated in soups or by in-cluding a bit more water in recipes such as zucchini bread. For great addi-tions to stir-fry and pasta dishes, you also can rehydrate vegetables bysoaking them in water for 10 minutes to an hour.

You can mix dried fruits with things such as hot cereal, muesli or granolato add sweetness and nutrients. They also can be blended with seeds, nutsand grains to make wholesome energy bars. Solar dried tomatoes tastesweet and are delicious when eaten plain, marinated in olive oil and garlic, ormade into a tomato pesto.

Many dried foods are excellent when eaten as they are. In fact, drying canimprove the flavor of some foods. Bananas are fantastic fruits, but dried ba-nanas are heavenly. A Roma tomato is almost too bland to eat fresh, but whendried, it’s a treat your taste buds will savor. Watery Asian pears are sometimesa little disappointing, but when dried, they are among the finest treats on Earth.

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