It’s asparagus season here (as for many of you) and we just love them! We could eat them everyday if we didn’t stop ourselves. There is very little about asparagus that I do not like besides the shortness of their growing time and the waste that comes from having to snap 1/4 of them away for fear of gnawing on a fibrous tough spot.
So every year I freeze my leftovers, trying to remember to use them in stocks for soups, only to have the little bags fall at the bottom of my freezer to then get freezer burnt and unused.
This year, I remembered something I had seen on the Earth to Glass Canning page about dehydrating asparagus and thought, why not? I decided to dehydrate the stems and see if I couldn’t pulse them into a fine powder to make asparagus salt.
It was a success! My official taster of all things (my dear husband) gave me the definite thumbs up and we are now looking forward to serving it as a salt substitute in one of our next meals.
What you’ll need :
- A dehydrator. Now, I know there are a LOT of nice fancy dehydrators out there (and one day we will own one!), but for us, we have been using one from the big box stores that we received as a present and have been completely satisfied. It just may take a bit longer.
- A blender or grinder that can pulse into fine powder. I’m thinking any self-serve, coffee or spice grinder would do.
All I did was dehydrate the stems until they were completely dried and no moisture was left (about 12 hours) and then pulsed them into a fine powder with 1 TBSP of sea salt.
It is delicious! Wasting food being one of my all time pet peeves, I think I’m gonna start making my own vegetable scraps seasoning salts from now on.
Let me know if you try it!
Family, Faith, Food and Fabric 
Well isn’t this cool? I would have never thought to dehydrate asparagus… and make a “salt” out of it?! Awesome.
Thanks so much for sharing.
xoxo
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You are welcome… I often just cut up tomatoes and cucumbers in a big communal plate for dinner. I’m gonna sprinkle with that an some pepper tonight, Yummy!
Let me know if you like it okay?
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Ooh! Great idea! I hope we will have a dehydrator one day.
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You could probably also sun dry them or send them in the oven to dry at like 150’F. I’m sure it would work!
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Great idea! Might have to give that a go now that we have some local asparagus 🙂
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You won’t regret it… I’m thinking about trying it with other veggies as well. 🙂
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Asparagus is my husband’s favorite vegetable and we have a nice patch planted. Dehydrating asparagus is not something I ever would have thought of to do, now I can’t wait to try it. 🙂
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Let me know how you like it!
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This is a great idea! We might try growing Asparagus next year (to late this year) and that is a great way to force… errr Encourage my Husband to eat more veggies 😉 Be well.
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You may have to wait a while before eating your own : Growing them from seed can take as long as 5 years before they are big enough the pick and eat. If you can get your hands on crowns to plant, you will cut your waiting time in 2. 🙂
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Fantastic idea! We do this with herbs, but I never thought of doing it with veggies! Thanks for sharing.
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You are welcome!
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Clever! We have friend that gift their extras, so this will work out great! Thanks for sharing.
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You are welcome… Hope it works out for you! 🙂
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I use my convection oven to dehydrate vegetables. Usually it is just herbs. I am like you I don’t like to waste food. I will try your idea on asparagus tough ends. I just got done drying Kale and now have a pint of crushed kale to use as seasoning. I live in South Florida so our growing season is now coming to a end. It is too hot and humid during the summer for most vegetables.
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Oh, I didn’t really think there was such a thing as the end of growing season in the South. I guess it makes sense. Mmm… kale seasoning, Now that sounds delish!
Thanks for stopping by!
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