One of the Strangest Things I Ever Made: Dehydrated Butternut Squash

Starts like this:

Turns into this:

Then turns into this:

 

Weird, huh? Yeah, I thought so too. So you take a butternut squash, peel it, cube it (1-inch cubes), soak the cubes for 8 hours in cold water (or overnight), drain, put them on a baking sheet, and stick it in the oven (or dehydrator. Imagine! What luxury) on the lowest possible temperature with the door open for about 16 hours. Turn the pieces over about halfway. Better yet, put the pieces on a rack so they dry on all sides at once and you can cut the dehydrating time in almost half. 

Of course, I can't follow a recipe for the life of me. So I forgot to soak the squash, which is the whole point; it makes it easier to digest. I then puréed the whole thing for some reason (I guess I figured the liquid would evaporate more easily that way?) and lined a baking sheet with the purée. God was it hard to blend that thing. Took forever. I had to coax my blender into cooperating by promising it something liquid later, such as a juicy smoothie with no ice cubes. I tell you, that thing's a workhorse, though. Wouldn't trade it for anything, not even a VitaMix. (Wouldn't trade it, but would accept a VitaMix as a gift).

Then I stuck it in the oven as per the instructions above. Took forever to dehydrate, more than 16 hours. I added fresh thyme, though, which was a lovely idea for once. You need to stir it in or it'll just dry out and be bland, though. 

Hours and hours later I sort of flipped the stuff over and broke it up a little. It's the inside that doesn't dehydrate well so the more surface area exposed to air the better. I even stuck it back in the blender after about 12 or 16 hours to break it more. It ended up looking like a strange kind of granola and the colour got bright orange, though the flesh had originally been pale. The taste is really interesting! Usually squash is mild and sweet, but this was a lot more pungent. With an acid (vinegar), it would work REALLY well. So I'd use this as a garnish for salad with a vinegar dressing. Kind of like raw croutons. They take a fair bit of chewing, but they're interesting. Originally the recipe from Rawmazing said to wrap it up with sage and some raw nut cream but that didn't sound like a good idea, so I just snacked a little. Just want to say that I'm glad I'm not actually "raw", and experimenting with these things is just fun and not a "life or not-eating" (aka death) thing...