Food drying - Dehydrators (merged)

arkonite_babe

I'm looking into buying a dehydrator, have some pennies to spare and thought it would be a good idea to prevent wastage and make the most of my home grown goodies.
Has anyone seen or used this model?
the lakeland model is getting mixed reviews and I'm not sure if I want to spend £100+ on a stockli or excaliber model just yet.

thanks for any advice!

arkonite_babe

*BUMP*
Anyone care to help?

Living_proof

Hi Arkonite-babe,

I did quite a lot of research into dehydrators before buying mine. I had concluded that my budget was suitable for a smaller, round one like the one on the link but I could see the benefits in the Excalibur, mainly because of not having to move trays around in the middle of the night and the general concensus of people I spoke to was that they all had started small but once they changed to the Excalibur, it was like night and day and there would be no turning back. I was going to wait until I saw one in a CS or CBS but as luck would have it I came across one on a board in a health food shop 600 miles away from where I live. It was a brand new, top of the range Excalibur at just £129 with all the paraflexx sheets. It is on now drying mushrooms, small plum tomatoes, swede and celery. I think the convenience in having all these items taking little space in the store cupboard will do it for me. I'm not sure it is money saving other than utilising food which would otherwise go to waste. It provides a wide choice of fruit and veg. without taking over your fridge and freezer, and yet retaining all the enzymes and vitamins, etc.

You have to start somewhere!

Ken68

Yes agree Proof, for the first time am able to use all of home grown plums and apples and pears,( and cherries from foraging.)
Very more-ish. Doing pineapples now from reduced in Sainsbury yesterday.

Living_proof

Do you rehydrate most of your produce Ken? A lot of the sites I have come across give guidance for snacky fruit and veg, but on the whole I think I would rehydrate most of mine and use them in stews and curries and so on.

I was very surprise just how much condensation a full Excalibur createsd and think it would be much worse in winter. Do you find you have to leave a window open when using it?

Ken68

Don't usually de-hydrate in the winter, use Excal for gluts only.
Excess Green runner beans go in the freezer, then some for drying and eventually straight into slow cooker. Most are for drying off naturally outside in pods. Then use beans for stews etc.
If you don't garden but buy fruit and veg when on offer, then cheapest would be freezer then drying.
Ideally I would like to have the dryer in an outhouse but no can do here, so have it in back lobby with door open.
Yes, do mostly snacky stuff, but it is a meal in itself.

Living_proof

When I downsize I may not have room for my big chest freezer so I am hoping to keep fish and meat and HM ready meals in the fridge-freezer and keep an ample selection of dried fruit and veg for convenience and variety. I will certainly try dried rosehips for tea and flavouring other fruit, etc. and will experiment on other foraged foodstuffs. I do plan to buy a house with veg garden within the next couple of years so gluts will be an inevitability.

MMLS

arkonite_babe wrote: »

*BUMP*
Anyone care to help?

After loads of research and reading endless reviews I went for the Excalibur. It arrived on monday and has been used twice since - 3 pineapples, bananas, kiwis, strawbs, and a big tray of red chillies that I brought back with me from the middle east (cost me about 50p). It's ready to go on again tonight. I wanted a dehydrator to take advantage of cheaper fruit and veg during the summer plus there's quite a few 'pick your own' farms close by. I've never had much luck growing my own produce though I'm trying - yet again - with tomatoes, herbs and peppers. My neighbour often gives me left overs from her organic veg box too. Having looked at the dehydrator you're interested in I'd say give it a go if you're unable to invest in something bigger but if you want to dehydrate your home grown produce - and I'm assuming you'll have a lot of it - you're not going to fit very much in there at any one time.
If it were at all possible to go for the Excalibur, coupled with the fact that you grow your own, I'm sure you wouldn't regret it.

PurpleMunchkin

Hello,

I've been working my way through this thread & found it immensely useful but just wanted to ask a couple of questions and get a bit of clarification.

With my work I have to purchase between 15 - 30 punnets of fruit a week, just 1 type a week & rotates between strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, mangos, melons, apple's, pears & tomatoes. For the past 6 months I have been freezing & preserving as much as possible but think the next step would be to dry the fruit for dd & dh snaking & on their breakfasts.

Theres no way I would justify either an Excalibur or stockli brand but I wondered which people thought was a better model - the Lakeland one or the Andrew James that someone posted a link to a few posts above.

I would probably just be using the machine once a week. I can't really afford a vacuum sealer but many people agree that lock & lock boxes work fine - how long would the dried fruit last in these ?

Is it quite easy to prepare the fruit, I'm assuming the berries go in whole, the tomatoes halved & the apples & pears sliced into rings - what about the mango ? And would it work drying melon ?

Sorry for all the questions & thanks in advance :beer:

PurpleMunchkin

Living_proof

Hi PM, Lots of questions there and I'm just a newbie at this so bear with me. You can dry all the fruit but maybe not the melon as it will contain so much water. Someone else more experienced will come along on that one. I did some mangos yesterday and to give you some idea of quantity, three large mangos, one pineapple and six kiwi fruit took up most of a nine tray excalibur. I had to take out a couple of trays as the mango started off quite fat. I find mango pretty uncontrollable to cut so the shapes were a bit varied, but turned out ok. If you were drying 15 punnets a week you would use a big d/h a couple of times a week. Nobody mentioned to me the amount of condensation which occurs, so check you have somewhere you can run it which won't be a nuisance, and bear in mind they are all pretty noisy. Once dried, though, the foods take up no space at all.