I’m thinking about getting a food dehydrator; I grow a lot of vegetables and it would be nice to preserve my own tomatoes this way; I also enjoy gathering wild mushrooms, but always find much more than I can use immediately.
I would make a solar dehydrator, but by the time harvests peak here in blighty, the amount of usable sunshine is rapidly declining.
I’m a little concerned about the energy consumption of electric dehydrators though; even some of the smaller ones are rated at one kilowatt.
So tell me; are they worth it? Are they really expensive to run?
I have this unit and I find that it works very well. I’ve only made jerky with it, but plan on doing some fruits and veggies soon for the summer.
Between the fan and the heater element it draws 500 watts, which is about twice as much as a standard PC plus CRT monitor. From what I’ve seen online, a 500 watt appliance on for 10 hours will use about 50 cents of electricity. YMMV of course.
A guy I work with who is an outdoor fanatic makes his own dehydrated meals for camping. He says they are far better then anything he can buy and a fraction of the price.
When I return to work I will check with Dave about what he dehydrates.
Mind you tomatoes don’t require anything other than an oven and are better than anything you will buy. Simply dehydrating them is a disservice to the tomatoes.
When the good Romas come in I make a few jars of oven dried tomatoes. I make up a bowl of “marinade” - olive oil with whatever flavourings I fancy …chopped chilis, peppercorns, fresh herbs, quartered onions, mustard seeds. Cut the tomatoes in half and trim and chuck them in the bowl of oil. Stick them in the oven layed out on a tray at the lowest setting you’ve got. My oven goes down to 70C at which temp they take about 16-18 hours to dry out. When they are dry pull them out, put them in jars and cover with the strained “marinade” (it’s pretty flavoursome now because it has been sitting around for a day).
Mushrooms I would dry like chilis. I do them in a Chux Superwipe. It is one of those cloth like cleaning clothes. With chilis, I prepare them (cut off stems basically), wrap them in the Superwipe and keep them in warm places for days. I hang the bundle on the line if I can get it off before dusk, or sit it in the convection heater or in a sunny window. It’s easy to test how the stoff is drying - just try to crumble the contents of the cloth.
The problem with dried stuff that you don’t submerge in oil is that they will tend to absorb moisture from the atmosphere.
I have a Ronco dehydrator that I picked up at a yard sale a couple of years ago.
Its the 5 tray model. More trays are available but I don’t use it enough to warrant buying them.
This is a still air model and it does a good job so far.
I’ve made jerky, dried apples and tried bananas. I didn’t like the bananas but maybe I did something wrong.
I have also dried celery leaves ,don’t laugh.They add a nice flavor to a lot of dishes.
I bought it for making jerky and it is yummy.
I generally use round steak since it is cheap.
I recently bought some jerky seasoning and am planning on a few batches to try the new seasonings.
Generally I just use soy sauce for a marinade. Sometimes I add some worchestershire sauce.
So what do you plan on dehydrating?
Since I don’t know where blighty is, I will just butt in with my 2 bits about solar dehydration. The best success I have had here in dairyland is a SUPER simple sandwich of materials (in order from bottom to top): corrugated tin, fiberglass screen window, sliced veggies, black cloth, glass window. Set this up at a nice angle tilted toward the sun, for lots o’ intense heat on the food (without sunlight bleaching), air flow behind through the corrugation.
I have tried a couple different electric dehydrators that I found at the town dump. They usually burn stuff on the lower trays and mold stuff on the top trays. Maybe I just didn’t believe in them! Apparently, neither did the people who threw them out.
I plan to grow huge quantities of tomatoes this year and I want to preserve them for cooking, but I also want to try drying courgettes (zucchini) and soft fruits such as strawberries; anything that I end up with a glut of. Wild mushrooms too; I found a really good place for Ceps (Porcini) last year and these are fantastic dried for soups and sauces.
Blighty=Britain. The glut of the tomato harvest (and the other stuff, for that matter) is most likely to occur as the days start to shorten; a solar dryer isn’t likely to work well for me, not to mention that most of my garden is in shade (anything that needs a lot of sun is grown on my allotment, which is about half a mile away).
I dried tomatos once. I used the electric oven set on warm. Tomatos were sliced salted and put on a cookie sheet. I guess it worked ok. I used them in chilli but also used mostly our canned tomatos.
For safety sake I freeze all my dried foods except that that gets eaten immediately and the dried celery leaf. Maybe its not necessary but I feel safer.
I have a Ronco dehydrator too and I like it. We mostly use it for making deer jerky but I’ve also used it for apples and bananas. (Make sure you soak the apples and/or bananas in some orange juice before dehydrating them otherwise they’ll turn brown!)
I haven’t used it for wild mushrooms though. I’ll have eto try that. We love wild mushrooms and always find more then we can use so we usually give a bunch to my husband’s parents or my parents. I should try dehydrating them and then we can keep them all for ourselves. Muwahahahaha!!
Another Ronco user here. I’ve used mine mainly to make jerky, but now you have me thinking about my own sun-dried tomatoes. I’m in Southern California, so there is no lack of sunshine issue to deal with! Mmmmmm…jerky. I have found that my dehydrator sucks down about $.60 per batch of jerky - very reasonable. I’ll burn more electricity than that finishing the latest Pratchett.
Jerky can be, and usually is made in the oven. I make my own special kind of jerky by using ground beef. Mix with seasoned salt, marinade, and spices. Then extrude strips onto the dehydrator trays using a “jerky gun.” Drying time is approx. 12-14 hours, depending on the relative humidity that day. Yummy! My version also has the advantage of being not quite so hard to bite off and chew. I swear, I have made moose jerky in the oven that i could have sharpened and used as a spear!
Mmmmmm…jerky. I have found that my dehydrator sucks down about $.60 per batch of jerky - very reasonable. I’ll burn more electricity than that finishing the latest Pratchett.