Source
r/dehydrating•
IMbleu

Sli ght emergency! It's been 30+ hours and my BBQ sauce is still sticky and gummy?

Apparently I'm insane. I poured some BBQ sauce on my trays, after spraying then with oil, I spread it out and I put it on at 135 degrees with some cabbage. The cabbage is long done. So I emptied those trays and put then back in the mix empty. But my BBQ sauce is still sticky when I touch it. What am I looking for? Is this as dry as it gets? I made fruit leathers a few days ago and was told that tomato sauces should dry up like fruit leathers. Well there is no comparison here. So do I crank the heat up? What do I do? Should I try letting it cool and see if it stiffens up? Please help!

Posted Jun 18, 2016, 5:56 AM UTC

411
samm1t•

Did I miss something? Why are you dehydrating a tray full of sweet baby rays?

13
IMbleuOP•

When I make BBQ chicken I usually boil it with water and BBQ sauce. I thought this would be more convenient than having open bottles in the fridge.

2
InterloperKO•

Yeah, where's the sauce on this dehy'd sauce recipe?

2
BagOfBrokenBits•

You might try spreading it thinner, if possible and push the temperature up by 10 degrees. And open the kitchen? windows.

I think that spraying things with oil could be a problem but I never do that, hopefully someone else will comment on that.

3
IMbleuOP•

Maybe I'll try taking it out and splitting it between 2 more sheets. I'll have to like cut it up though.

2
BagOfBrokenBits•

If you have a big enough dish it's quite easy to empty out dehydrator trays to process half-done foods and re-tray them to expose a new surface. I do this with sticky fruit quite often.

(Although if I want to preserve produce in sticky syrups and sauces I water bath them in Kilner jars rather than dehydrate)

1
Grimmner•

Homemade or store bought sauce?

There might be enough sugar in it that gummy will be the best you can do unless you've got it spread paper thin. Lesson I learned with watermelon slices in the dehydrator.

3
IMbleuOP•

It's sweet baby rays. And I poured it quite think. But I figured it would just take longer not be totally ruined?

3
ShittingBalls•

I think that sauce is largely corn syrup. I don't have a bottle here to check, ut if that's accurate it may explain your trouble.

5
ekaceerf•

From the Sweet Baby Rays website.

Ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Vinegar, Tomato Paste, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Pineapple Juice Concentrate, Natural Smoke Flavor, Spices, Caramel, Sodium Benzoate As A Preservative, Molasses, Corn Syrup, Garlic, Sugar, Tamarind, Natural Flavor.

2
justablur•

I used that too. Ended up wiping most of it off and just keeping it in the fridge.

1
Lordofthereef•

This is my thought as well. Store bought sauces are generally very sugary and are unlikely to stiffen very much at all.

2
nodochinko•

Likely it was the sugars in the sauce or possibly some of the chemicals in it. Have you tried making your own BBQ sauce? Maybe you could make a low sugar one and add the sugar in as you rehydrate it?

1