Powdered Milk

Step 1

Set up your dehydrator. Many dehydrators come with fruit roll trays. If this is the case for you, you can set up the trays to hold the milk. My dehydrator has fruit roll sheets but not trays that can hold liquid. So, instead of pouring the milk into individual trays, I removed all but one tray from my dehydrator. I used two oven-safe dishes – one on the bottom and one in the middle on the remaining tray.

Step 2

Heat your dehydrator to 57 degrees Celsius or 135 degrees Fahrenheit. On my dehydrator, this is the same setting used for fruit leather.

Step 3

Pour your milk into the trays. If your dehydrator uses fruit roll trays, you can pour a small amount of milk into each tray. This is more effective because your milk will dry out much faster. In my case, I poured two cups of fresh, low-fat milk into each oven-safe dish. This will take a few more hours since the milk is deeper, but either way works just fine. Let your dehydrator run. If you are using the fruit leather trays, your milk will probably take 8 to 12 hours to dry. Otherwise, it will take longer. Just keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t scorch and turn brown. If it starts to turn brown, set the temperature just a few degrees lower

Step 4

When your milk starts to turn to a paste, you’ll want to scrape it loose from the pan so it doesn’t stick.

Step 5

When your milk is dry and crispy, put it in your blender or Nutribullet and crush it into a fine powder. If you want to make it even finer, you can run it through a sieve.

Step 6

Store in a mason jar in a cool, dark place for up to 3 months. Alternatively, you can store your powdered milk in the freezer so that it lasts indefinitely.

Step 7

If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can make your powdered milk in the oven. Use an oven-safe glass dish to pour a small amount of milk into. Set your oven on the lowest setting, and place the dishes in the oven. Keep the oven door cracked to allow moisture to evaporate. Watch carefully so that your milk doesn’t scorch. Your milk is ready to crush when it is completely dry and crispy.

Step 8

To reconstitute powdered milk, add ¼ cup of powdered milk to1 cup of warm water and stir well. Always add the powder to the water rather than adding the water to the powder to avoid clumping. Chilling the milk for 8 hours after it is mixed can help it to taste more like fresh milk.

Step 9

First of all, the shallower the dish (the less deep your milk), the faster your milk will dehydrate. This is ideal because you don’t want to grow bacteria in your milk instead of dehydrating it. It’s better to have multiple shallow trays than one or two deeper trays. If you can’t get a dish into your dehydrator, you can use a combination stove and dehydrator method. Start your milk in the oven following the oven directions. Then, as the milk begins to thicken into a paste, you can transfer it to your dehydrator and spread it across multiple trays. This will speed up the process and reduce the risk of burning your milk in the oven. Four cups of liquid milk gave me 1 cup of powdered milk. The texture, fragrance, and feel is nearly identical to store-bought powdered milk.