Food drying - Dehydrators (merged)

Kevie192

Ooh, I bet the house smells yummy!

mambury

it does..... Might do some apple slices later!!

Finefoot

savvy wrote: »

LMAO there was no fight there at all was there Have fun with it when it comes

I am thanks! took ages to arrive, but now that it has, I am having fun! Just need to collect more jars from friends now.....

Pitlanepiglet

Hmmm tell me about dehydrating lemons....I've got a net that I was intending to dehydrate so that I could use them in drinks. Having consulted my dehydrator book (the Excalibur book) it tells me that citrus fruits are poor for dehydrating and suitable for powders for drinks etc?

Does anyone has any experience of dehydrating lemons?

[Deleted User]

I am joining you on this thread. Heck we downsized and I gave my dehydrator AWAY. It was a l`equip with several additional tiers. I was forever swapping the layers around but it worked well and even today, a good 12 months later, I used my dehydrated onions as there weren`t any in my veggie box. My dehydrated porcini are wonderful still.

Now we have moved and I have an allotment and am not planning on letting anything go to waste so my eyes wondered to this thread. I love the way many of you are so adventurous and I am goint to buy another. Well heck I saved the cost on porcini alone. My first one many many years ago was a cheap round one and tbh it was ok but I would never have recommended it

I am going for an excalibur but cannot decide how many trays. Do you find that the top trays don`t dry as well? I`ll wait to buy until some kind souls advise me

LJM

how do you make the fruit leathers if you dont have the dehydrator these interested me when i watched alys fowlers programme

Pitlanepiglet

kittie wrote: »

I am going for an excalibur but cannot decide how many trays. Do you find that the top trays don`t dry as well? I`ll wait to buy until some kind souls advise me

Welcome Kittie, I think many of us are new to dehydrating so the more the merrier!

I bought the 9 tray Excalibur with the timer. I worked on the basis that I was likely to dehydrate in large batches to deal say a glut of apples and whilst I could choose to use fewer trays if I bought the bigger model but I couldn't add trays to the smaller model and there wasn't a huge price difference.

I'm very glad with the decision that I made, ours has been running full of apples for days and I STILL have bags of apples to process.

It's running now with four trays of peppers, one of lemons, two mushrooms and two of apples.

The footprint of the 9 tray and the smaller model is the same, the 9 tray sits nicely on our counter under the top cupboards and whilst it takes more energy to run the bigger model you can dry much more produce.

I would say if you're likely to be dealing with a glut of produce from an allotment that you'll feel quite frustrated with the smaller model.

[Deleted User]

I decided on the 9 tray after I read that it could be used for proving my bread dough. Now that is one big big bonus for me as I looked into making a bread prover system some time ago. I have just spent ages looking at ways of cutting veg and apples evenly, after always doing most of them by hand and I have settled on a borner mandoline with an adjustable thickness. Doh, yes I know I`ll have to be ultra careful

Piglet thanks for the feedback and next step now is to order the excalibur and then position it on the fridge so that dh takes a while to notice it. I have planted far too many onions for keeping so dried onions will pay for the dehydrator this time

Pitlanepiglet

We have gone back to cutting apples by hand as the dehydrator is more tolerant than I thought to different thickness apples. A mandolin was one other alternative but as we don't have one I'll wait till I can find one at a car boot sale - let me know how your fingers cope with it!

Onions are next on my list, once we have finished the glut of apples...we may be some time!

Still haven't tried leathers, will do once we've got shot of the apples!

Pitlanepiglet

Ahh second post to say, Kittie, the dehydrator is quite big, bigger than I thought anyway...I think your OH may have to very unobservant not to notice! Plus I couldn't get mine out of its box on my own :rotfl: