I finally did it! I dehydrated my beets and made beet root powder! There are so many uses for beet root powder and it's incredibly healthy for you as well! Beets are FULL of nutrients and vitamins... they have also been known to help fight cancer as well! A great way to add beets to your diet is to make beet root powder (or buy it) and add it to certain things like smoothies, which is exactly the way my husband does it!
What I realized as I was drying my beets was that it was going to take a lot more beets to make a good amount of powder but I went ahead and tried it with the few beets I had since it was my first time anyway. First I washed and cut off the tops to the beets and cut them all in half.
Next I steamed them for about 20 to 30 minutes...until tender. These beets that I had were fairly large so I went ahead and steamed them for 30 minutes and they were perfect.
I then peeled the skin off with a pairing knife and shredded all the beets. Since my intention was to make a powder I went ahead and chose to shred rather than slice... figuring it would dry better and not be leathery. I later did some research and found out that, since my intention was to make powder, I could have just put the beets into the dehydrator raw instead of steaming them.
I went ahead and laid the shredded pieces out between three different trays. The instruction manual that came with my dehydrator was no help at all so I just guessed and adjusted my trays to sit as far away from each other as possible and I opened the vent on the lid completely.
And here it is in the morning after 12 hours! I needed the beets to be brittle and they were! As I said before... I only had about 5 beets. it might have been better if I had quite a few more.
Then it was time to try and make the powder. I initially thought my food processor would work but as you can see below it left quite a bit of large pieces and only made the tiniest bit of powder.
At this point I was quite disappointed with the result of my beet root powder so I took a step back and did a little bit of research online to see if I had any other options. I'm so glad that I did this because I discovered I could use a coffee grinder instead!! And VOILA! Here is my beet root powder!!
So I am very happy with my first attempt at making beet root powder but next time I think I'll try a few different things:
1. I'm going to try putting the beets into the dehydrator raw, thinly sliced.2. I'm going to use my coffee grinder from the get go... I think in doing the food processor first it kept me from having the finest powder I could have had. So definitely give this a shot if you want... It was so easy and fun! Plus... other than the health benefits you can use beet root powder as a beauty secret as well!! Check out what I did with the little bit of beet root powder I made!Other Magickal HappeningsGoddess Herbal Cabinet