Sauce to Powder

I get asked, quite a bit, why I dehydrate a lot of our stuff instead of canning it. Well let me tell you why. I love that I can make a large batch of sauce and only have to use 1 jar to hold it all. This sauce was about 14+ cups before I dehydrated it. Now instead of using a dozen or so jars, I use one left over (cleaned out) spaghetti jar for the 14 oz. of powder I have. And in this day and age when jars are hard to find and the prices are through the roof, it's even more important to me to conserve where I can. (yes, pun intended) ;)

If you have a dehydrator, this is super easy to do! I usually cook my sauces down on the stove until most of the water is cooked out. Low and slow will get you the best results. You don't want to burn the bottom, especially after you've spent all that time & ingredients to make the sauce. The recipe I used here is from my ​Double Duty Slow Cooker Chicken and Enchilada Sauce recipe. Once the sauce is cooked down, it needs to cool. The consistency should be the thickness of applesauce. Once cooled, spread out on your dehydrator sheets like you would to make fruit rollups.

Dehydrate at 135° for 6 - 8 hours (depending on dehydrator model and humidity). After about four hours, check the sauce to see if it is dry enough to peel and flip over for the duration on the drying time. I find that flipping it helps it dry faster.

How to know when it's dry: When it's completely dry it will be dry to the touch and snap when you bend it. If it's still a little bendy, dry a little longer. You want to make sure there is no moisture left in it.

Once completely dry, break up the sheets of dried sauce into a large bowl and then place in blender or spice grinder. Once ground into powder, place in air tight jar.

To use your sauce from powder: For me, I usually start with the amount of boiling water I want as sauce, and then add a couple tablespoons at a time until the flavor is what I am going for for that dish. Depending on how fine or coarse your powder is will determine the dissolving time. Mine usually only takes about 5 minutes.

Other sauces you can dehydrate: Spaghetti sauce, BBQ Sauce, Picante Sauce / Salsa, Siracha and other Hot Sauces, mustards, etc/

It is not recommended to dehydrate sauces that have a heavy oil or dairy content.