It’s late July and I’m swimming in cucumbers! I’ve made jar after jar of fridge pickles, cucumbers and onions, and my latest dish is a healthy twist on a popular snack food. I found a recipe on Pinterest for salt and vinegar cucumber chips and as soon as I read it, I knew I had to try it.

The cucumber chips are salty, crispy, and tangy. We’ll enjoy these as an evening snack during game night or when catching the latest episode of House of the Dragon.

This is the first salty snack I’ve dehydrated, but I’ve long preserved fruit that way, and it’s one of our favorite sweet, healthy snacks. My favorite fruits to dehydrate are strawberries and apple slices. And, unlike canning, dehydrating fruits and vegetables are mostly a hands-off way to preserve food.

Once it’s been sliced and placed into the dehydrator, I just turn the machine to the right temperature, let the dehydrator do its job, and come back when it’s done (usually 10-12 hours later). Dehydrated foods also take up way less space than canned foods. For the dehydrated cucumber chips I used three cucumbers, and the strawberries you see in the photos are about three pounds of strawberries.

If you’ve never preserved food but you’re thinking of trying it, I recommend dehydrating before learning to can. It’s less of an investment up front (you can find a new dehydrator for under a $100 that will do a decent job), and you don’t need to invest in canning jars, but instead may use old peanut butter, pickle, or pasta sauce jars you’ve saved.

Give it a try, you may be surprised at how simple it is, but how quickly you can build shelf stable foods for later.