I stopped on the way home to look at an old unkept Celeste. It is a huge bush hear a commercial storage facility that the power company keeps whacking back because it interferes with the power lines. It REALLY needs to be properly pruned, but oh well.

Anyway, lots of ripe figs were already on the ground and most that were left were out of my reach. But I was still able to pick a small bag full. These were some awful looking little, but they tasted OK so I took them home.

Anyway, I decided to try them out in my new dehydrator, first batch of figs. I left them whole and dried them on 125F overnight. In the morning they were to die for! They were transformed. Wow, I could not believe the difference. The concentration of flavors was amazing and has got me thinking about all the possiblities.

As I have written about before, there is an abandoned yellow fig near-by. Its figs are just OK, but I wonder if the dehydrator will work the same magic on them? That UNK yellow is a late fig, probably will be mid to late Sept this year, but when it does ripen I am going to run all of them through my dehydrator.

Has anyone every dehydrated a really good fig like a VdB or Hardy Chicago?

In my opinion Celeste is a really good fig.  Maybe not the best for drying, but I enjoy mine.  It is also my favorite  from the 10 or so varieties I have eaten fresh.

Maybe some Celeste are tasty, good looking figs. But this tree (if its Celeste) produces small ugly figs. But this was the first fig tree I found in my area and I can pick whatever I want from it. So you know the saying, "any fig is a good fig when you don't have any others."

Celeste and Blue Celeste have both been losers for me. Very small figs both in my greenhouse and outdoors. I'd like them small but they don't taste good either.

The outdoor ones freeze back to the ground or nearly so every yr.

Zone 7b in west TX is much harder on figs than most places east of here.

The Celeste figs I pick around my area taste good if really ripe. I can imagine dehydrating concentrated whatever was good in your local fig Gene, because when the weather is dry and you find a fig that has really dried up on a tree, they are usually fantastic. I hope I start getting enough soon to try dehydrating. As it is now, I only have enough to eat fresh.

Mike in Hanover, VA

I find yellow figs taste better dried versus the smaller black figs.  Maybe because they tend to be bigger and juicier to start so they don't get cooked as much?

I also find that if I can dry them in the direct sun even partially that also adds to the flavor and saves on power usage. 
I pick the figs in the morning, cut them and set them in the sun to dry for the day (you can cover them with a screen if you have a bug problem.  I have never had to do that) after sunset put them in the dehydrator to finish them off. 

In west Texas dry heat they dehydrate quickly if cut in half. One day at 90F may be too much. Some dry plenty on the plant.

I'm jealous. 
But here in Southern Ontario we tend to get a lot of sunny days in September so it works out very well to dry figs, tomatoes and other fruits.  The dehydrator is a good standby if we get into rainy periods.