Hey all,
I'm looking into getting a dehydrator mainly to dry my own fruit and make my own jerky. I've come across quite a few different varieties, shapes, and sizes. I'm looking for some input from anyone with experience who has used them before.
Some things I want on my purchased item: a timer and a digital temperature gauge/setting. I've read trying to use a dehydrator without these takes full attention to make sure you don't over/under do something. Since I won't have the time or patience to stand over the top of the dehydrator all day, these are a must.
Another thing I've read is that square shapes tend to dry unevenly. Can anyone verify this? If so, is it worth worrying about?
Thanks in advance!
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pepperhead212
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applestar
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It sounds like what you want are on higher end than ones I've tried. I'll cobble together a comment regardless, in case you and others might find this helpful:
High end dehydrators on my dreamlist are all stainless steel commercial grade.
For now, I've decided to stick with inexpensive ones because low-mid to mid-range ones keep conking out on me far sooner than their worth.
My current one (round neat tray design that allows them to be flipped and stack nested, reducing overall height to about 1/3, thus saving storage space) has no temp settings and doesn't even have on-off switch -- you plug it in to turn on and unplug to turn off, which got old (tiresome) very fast. But then ...it occurred to me that this means it doesn't have electronic anything to be damaged by hardware shut down. So I bought this for my timer, and it has been working great:
Century Mechanical Countdown Timer 2 Plug - Energy Saving
Link: https://a.co/e9074qr
(Note 2-plug means it's 2-prong and doesn't have the 3rd grounding plug -- neither does my dehydrator)
12 hrs max, but I haven't had to run it for longer than 8 hours at a time so far, and I usually need to check on level of dehydration as well as rotate and shuffle the trays while processing anyway. I set/program an alarm (or series) on the iPad or iPhone -- whichever I will have on me -- for reminder if I think it's necessary.
Best part has been that I can set it up before going to bed and run it during the cooler hours of the night and know things won't be over dehydrated. I can run it again for an hour or so to crisp if high ambient humidity affects their crispness.
High end dehydrators on my dreamlist are all stainless steel commercial grade.
For now, I've decided to stick with inexpensive ones because low-mid to mid-range ones keep conking out on me far sooner than their worth.
My current one (round neat tray design that allows them to be flipped and stack nested, reducing overall height to about 1/3, thus saving storage space) has no temp settings and doesn't even have on-off switch -- you plug it in to turn on and unplug to turn off, which got old (tiresome) very fast. But then ...it occurred to me that this means it doesn't have electronic anything to be damaged by hardware shut down. So I bought this for my timer, and it has been working great:
Century Mechanical Countdown Timer 2 Plug - Energy Saving
Link: https://a.co/e9074qr
(Note 2-plug means it's 2-prong and doesn't have the 3rd grounding plug -- neither does my dehydrator)
12 hrs max, but I haven't had to run it for longer than 8 hours at a time so far, and I usually need to check on level of dehydration as well as rotate and shuffle the trays while processing anyway. I set/program an alarm (or series) on the iPad or iPhone -- whichever I will have on me -- for reminder if I think it's necessary.
Best part has been that I can set it up before going to bed and run it during the cooler hours of the night and know things won't be over dehydrated. I can run it again for an hour or so to crisp if high ambient humidity affects their crispness.
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pepperhead212
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 2888
- Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2014 1:52 pm
- Location: Woodbury NJ Zone 7a/7b
I had one of those old, round dehydrators years ago, with no thermostat, and peppers would dry, but toast, at that high temp. So I got a better one - a Veggi-kiln, with 10 trays and a thermostat. The one thing that I didn't like about it was that the shelves fronts formed the door, so nothing very thick, such as many larger peppers, could not be dried, unless I removed a tray, and used duct tape to cover the opening! So when that one started showing its years (over 20,so not bad!), I began looking for one with a door - this way, I can leave a tray out, to dry larger items. As for timers, there is no sure way to predict how long a given food will take to dry, and if the dehydrator shuts off and the food sits for several hours, until I get home from work, FI, the food could absorb moisture from humid, summertime air, so I prefer to turn it off and immediately put it in the jars. So I really didn't see how a timer would be useful, for the types of things I dry, which are mostly to a totaly dry state. And I usually use a very low temp, for a longer time, though recently I tried some things at higher temps, to toast the item somewhat, remembering what happened with those peppers in the old dehydrator.