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Trail Bytes, July 2024: Dehydrating Kiwis & Army Green Smoothies.
July 31, 2024
Hello,

For this month’s Trail Bytes, I explored the evergreen topics of dehydrating kiwis and kiwi fruit leather. Dehydrated kiwi retains its green color well, and it adds a nice sweet-tart flavor to any dried, mixed-fruit snack sack.

But run those delicate kiwi pieces through a blender, and what comes out is anything but green. By itself, kiwi fruit leather comes out light golden-brown. Mix it with banana, and it takes on more of a tan color. With strawberries, it turns red, as expected.

Green Smoothies for the Trail?

When you blend kiwi, banana, and spinach together, the color goes into full camo-mode. After starting out emerald green, it dries into brown leather, and then turns army green if you rehydrate it back into a smoothie.

While the end color of my rehydrated green smoothie was just a memory of its former glory, the taste was good, and any bitter traces of spinach were camouflaged by the tart aspects of kiwi and the sweet, smoothing effect of banana. It tastes good as leather, too.

I made one leather with raw spinach, and one with cooked spinach. Studies show that beta carotene, calcium, iron, and a few other nutrients, are absorbed by the body better when spinach is cooked. On the other hand, folate, vitamin C, niacin, riboflavin, and potassium are better absorbed from raw spinach. You can choose.

The taste was similar in both experiments. Making smoothies with raw spinach is the most common method, and baby spinach is preferred because it is less bitter.

I’m including the recipe exclusively here in the newsletter, and at a later date, I will put together a more comprehensive page on the website about dehydrating green smoothies—with your help.

Kiwi-Banana-Spinach Leather Recipe

Makes 1 green smoothie leather.

Ingredients:

  • 2 kiwis (150 g)
  • 1 banana (150 g)
  • 1½ cups raw spinach (50 g before cooking)

Procedure:

Run ingredients through a blender.

Makes approximately 1½ cups after blending.

Spread thinly on nonstick dehydrator tray.

Dehydrate at 135°F / 57°C) for 10+ hours. Flip over onto a nonstick mesh sheet near the end to ensure complete drying of both sides.

For storage and transport, fold dried leather into columns in parchment paper.

To rehydrate back into a smoothie, tear leather into pieces and combine with 1 cup of cold water. I rehydrated mine in a Ziploc bag. Let soak 10–15 minutes, then shake and squeeze until smooth.

Green Smoothie Challenge

Spinach isn’t the only vegetable one might put in a green smoothie. There’s kale and microgreens. Microgreens are the earliest stage of a vegetable plant’s development after the sprouting stage. They’re super nutritious. See: J&L Farms & Produce. Examples are broccoli, sunflower, pea, and radish.

So, my challenge to you is… let’s come up with some more green-smoothie leather recipes. What have you tried? What are your ideas for fruits and greens to include? How can we retain the green color?

Hit reply with your suggestions, or use the Contact Chef Glenn form on the website.

Dehydrating Kiwi & Kiwi Fruit Leather

Explore the new page on Backpacking Chef:

Dehydrating Kiwi & Kiwi Fruit Leather

You’ll find all the step-by-step dehydration instructions and recipes for kiwi fruit cocktails, and kiwi fruit leathers and smoothies.

Coming in August:

I’ll be cooking up a backpacking recipe or two in the new GSI Outdoors cookware that I picked up when I was back in Georgia. I already had a couple of their pots, so I’m already a fan.

See you in the woods or back here in Trail Bytes.

Freundliche Grüsse,

Chef Glenn & Dominique

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