I have cooked since I was in high school, but I am constantly learning new things! And I continue to like to do more and more myself, including preparing my own ingredients. I’d like to get a food drying system to dry my own chilies, make coconut flour from fresh coconuts (after making coconut milk), etc.
What food drying system would you recommend? Thanks for your advice!
Do a search for Excaliber Dehydrators. I’ve been using one for years. It isn’t cheap, but is a good compromise between the cheapy counter top (Ronco I’m looking at you) and a professional model.
I have a really simple dehydrator. It’s just a heating element, cover, and plastic ventilated trays. It does the job just fine but looking back I’de have sprung for the one with the circulating fan, because it’s much faster.
Still, I can’t complain. Dehydrating isn’t a complicated technology. Your oven on “warm” with the door cracked open with a spoon works just fine too.
ETA: the machine in the link is like a thousand times fancier than mine.
Let me add this. It really depends upon how much you expect to dry and how much time you wish to spend. I make jerky. Lots of jerky. I went through two of the counter top models. One without the forced air and one with. When using either of those I would have to rotate the trays and items upon them in order to get anything like an even dry. And it would take forever to do the 25 lbs of wet meat that I would do in a batch. With the Excaliber I got (9 trays, thermostat, no timer) I still have to rotate a bit, but nothing like the other two. Plus it does the job in maybe a third of the time.
Aeschines, I’ve borrowed that same Nesco dehydrator from a friend a few times, and I thought it worked fine. I dried hot peppers, sliced strawberries, and hot dogs (for dog treats). I didn’t use it for anything really wet, like beef jerky or fruit leather, so I don’t know about that.
Dehydrators are really more or less the same, with the major difference being whether they have a fan or not. As mentioned, a fan speeds up the process considerably, and if you live in a humid climate, I’d recommend springing for a unit with a fan.
One other thing to consider is the shape. A lot of the home dehydrators are round with a big hole in the middle you have to place food around. This can be problematic for bigger, straighter items like beef jerky or herbs with big leaves. The rectangular ones accommodate such things better with less wasted space.
If money were no object, I’d get a Sedonamyself. Had one when I was working for a professional herbalist. It was sweeeeeeeet!
But Alton Brown’s DIY box fan dehydratoris always an option if you’re tight on cash!
What do I actually have? Some brown round thing straight out of the 70’s that I got at the thrift store for $7. Works fine, but as I said, I don’t like the wasted space of the round tray design with the hole in the middle.
I used Alton Brown’s for fruit and it worked great! Plus you had the added bonus of no heating element leaving the fruits tasting fresh and not cooked.
Excaliber Dehydrators are fine units. they cost a bunch. they have more screen levels than cheap models and have rectangular screens, so you can put more in. the airflow is better than cheap round brands and even temperature so they are efficient dryers.