Sally, in fact you can.

On a hot dry day, (important dry), stick something outside under the sun and blow a fan over it. You will get nice dehydrated food.

dcarch

I agree, you can dehydrate food on a screen in your back yard, in the oven, Elery's mother used to dry berries on a tray in the back window of the car, with the windows down just a little for ventilation.

I have an Excaliber, it's fast, it's easy, it's consistent. It doesn't cost much electricity to run it, I can dehydrate even when it's rainy or humid or whatever. Plus, drying outside means you get the neighbor's wood smoke, whatever pollutants are in the air, etc.

And I also use mine to make yogurt.

Annie

The back window of a car works, too...crack the windows to get a little air flow.

I have a big Nesco/American Harvest that I got at out interstate fair years ago. We tested a dozen dehydrators at the Extension Office, a mesh zipper bag that you could hang in a tree, homemade, Ronco, Excalibur. They all worked. The consensus was to get the best one you could afford. The spendy ones had more control and the trays didn't need to be rotated.

Ha, if I typed faster we would have posted at the same time. Annie, how many trays can you use with the Excalibur? I covet one, but when the motor blew on the Nesco, I looked at all my trays, berry screens and fruit leather trays and just got a new base. It works fine, but they did away with the fan control and it runs on high all the time. Saving on electricity may be the justification I need to upgrade, hehe.

I recall a Good Eats episode where he made beef jerky using furnace filters (pleated paper about 2 ft x 2 ft) taped to a box fan, laying flat.

I have a old (25 years?) dehydrator with 4 stacking trays, a fan, and a heater. They are pretty cheap new, nearly free used, and last forever.

The main advantage over drying the food in the sun is that flies, cats, raccoons and small children don't nibble on your jerky. And, of course, in PDX we only have reliable sun for a short time each year.

These all look like interesting ideas. I like the idea of trying the filter and a box, especially since we're having temps around 105 to 110 these days. I'll look for the brands mentioned, too. I just want to get a lot better about preserving food rather than wasting it. I've read part of the frugal thread, will have to finish reading it tonight. That got me to thinking about what I need to really preserve and save as much of what I grow, or find on sale, as I can.

Thanks for the input, as always. Y'all are always so helpful.

Sally

I have two Excalibur dehydrators. One 4 tray and one 9 tray. Had them both for several decades without a problem. They've been running almost 24/7 since mid June and will keep going thru October. Ours are in the garage on a rolling kitchen cart. Love 'em & highly recommend Excalibur.

/tricia

Some drawbacks to dehydrating outdoors...

-High humidity. This will cause insufficient or even halt drying. This is why you need to bring your food indoors overnight or else it will rehydrate when the humidity goes up overnight.

-Controlling temperature. Not all foods dry at the same temperature.

-Meat needs to be dried indoors at 145-degrees F using an oven or a dehydrator.

-Neither meat or vegetables (other than vine-dried beans) are recommended for drying outside. Vegetables are low in sugar and acid, which increases the risks for food spoilage. The high-sugar and high-acid content of fruits make them safe to dry outdoors WHEN CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE.

What's favorable? It takes several days to dry foods outdoors. You need hot, breezy days with humidity below 60%, and a minimum temperature of 85-degrees F, and higher temperatures are better.

-All foods dried outdoors also need a pasteurization treatment following drying to kill insects and their eggs.
How to:
Oven method- Place the food on a tray or in a shallow pan and put in an oven preheated to 140-160-degrees F for 30 minutes.
Freezer method- Seal the food in a plastic freezer bag, place in a freezer set at 0-degrees F and hold for at least 48-hours.

I teach a lot of classes on dehydrating and the #1 dehydrator owned by my students is the NESCO American Harvest - because of the price, availability, and they are real workhorses. For really serious folks, they will generally pay the big bucks for an Excalibur and will love their dehydrator and never regret the investment.

You'll find more general information and lots of how-to and recipes at the link below.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: National Center for Home Food Preservation - How Do I Dry?

Here is my solar dehydrator. It is designed to be:

1. Collapsible for compact storage.
2. Use the same trays as my electric dehydrator, so that if the sun goes out, the trays go into the electric one to finish up.
3. Aluminum reflector backing to use the sun�s UV light to sanitize both sides and for faster drying.
4. Caged and screened to keep away the insects and critters.

Dcarch

katiec, I have the 9 tray model, in black. Has a fan, adjustable temperature, I love it and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I had an old Harvest Maid, it was at least 30 years old. One day it caught fire and melted. Yes, it actually melted, thankfully it was out in the garage on cement or it probably woulc have caused a lot more damage. There were no actual flames but the aroma of melting plastic lingered for weeks! Since all the racks and screens were in the darned thing when it melted, I didn't have that issue, and Elery just bought me the Excaliber. I'm going to have to dry a lot of hot peppers to justify THAT purchase!

Annie

I have a Nesco American Harvest, and it works fine.

However, if you have an oven that's gentle enough (i.e., one that has a fairly low lowest setting) you can dry stuff in it. You can take a half-sheet pan and put a cooling rack in it, place your stuff on the rack and dry at the lowest setting of your oven.

If you wish to pursue dehydrating techniques and foods, Mary Bell's dehydrator cookbook is a worthwhile purchase.

Here is a link that might be useful: dehydrator cookbook

dcarch's dryer is really creative, covering all the problems other solar driers have. Good design, dcarch!

I love my 9-tray Excalibur because humidity levels outside here are very high (in the South that is called "summer" from May to October). It does have to live in the finished outbuilding (no, not the outhouse :-) when drying something like garlic. The evaporation into the air that takes place is run through the air conditioner so there are hidden costs using a dehydrator, but it's still a small cost.

It is invaluable for saving all manner of fruits and vegetables that then only take up a tiny space relative to the full size bags of the same stuff in the freezer, or canned taking space on a shelf, and you can put a variety of things on the trays to dry at the same time. With 9 trays I can "sun" dry 25 pounds of tomatoes at once.

I make vegetable soup base by drying bits and pieces, or over supply, of summer vegetables, then grind them together to make a powder. Add a cup of boiling water to a couple tablespoonfuls and then you have instant soup; boiled for a while with some leftover meat, pasta, rice, and/or fresh vegetables you have chunky soup. I even hide vegetables in it that my family doesn't particularly like and they don't know it - like turnips and summer squash.

I bought a book called "Dry It- You'll Like It!" written about 1978; OOP now, I am sure, that's a real treasure. I found it in a gift shop last year at some touristy gift shop on the coast.

Nancy

I went to Excaliber's website, and saw the different dryers/sizes they have. I wonder if their guidlines for what size to get are good to follow. I've never dried anything in my life, but want to start learning to do it. I wonder if it would be a waste of money to get one of the smaller ones, even though I'd probably just be drying things for the 2 of us. Right now, (and maybe forever -it seems forever) my son and his family are living with us, so there's 5 of us. I would love to dry tomatoes and peppers.

They said that drying fruits and vegetables is cheaper than buying them already dried. I wonder, if I'm paying $2.99 or $2.49/ pound for peaches or apples or whatever, or that much for a little bitty container of blueberries, am I really saving money buying fresh and drying them myself?

Sally

Sally -

Finding food to dry is the easy part - learning how to incorporate it in your meals can be more difficult for those new to dehydrating, and your dehydrated foods will die of loneliness sitting on a shelf. Dried foods are rarely "instant" foods. They are often a different color or texture than what you are accustomed to, so there is a learning curve using them.

Personally, I do more dehydrating now that there are only two of us. Can't use that celery up in a timely fashion - dehydrate it. Found a bargain container of mushrooms at the store - dehydrate them. Free-for-the-picking apples - dehydrate them.

You will also find you like some dehydrated foods and not others.... People often dehydrate banana slices thinking they will get those crispy banana chips they buy at the store, but those are made completely differently than home-dehydrated.

I've been drying sweet cherries, and when I go to use them for something other than out-of-hand snacking or an add-in for quick breads, I have to remember to soak them overnight in an equal amount of water to rehydrate them. Sometimes dried works well, while other applications need it to be rehydrated first. Some foods need to cook 30-60 minutes to rehydrate them.

Apple slices:
For raw applesauce: Soak 1-cup dried apple slices in 1-cup of hot apple cider for 3 to 4 hours. Puree in blender and serve.
For cooked applesauce: Pour 1-cup boiling water over 1-cup dried apple slices. Cover and simmer over low heat for about 30-minutes, or until apples are soft.

For dehydrating blueberries, cranberries and gooseberries, you either cut them in half, or drop them in boiling water for 30-seconds to split the skins. This is a necessary step or your berries won't dry properly.

I take slightly over-ripe fruit and make fruit leather with it, alone or in a mixture of fruits. The fruit leather can be used for making fruit sauce, not just a snack. You can also make vegetable leather, which works well added to soup along with dehydrated vegetables.

I do a lot of sprouting (grains/seeds/beans) and will dehydrate the extras and add them to meatloaf or meat/bean mixtures, cookies, protein bars, fish patties...

I like to make packets of Lentil Soup with dehydrated foods.

1/2 c. lentils (no preparation necessary)
1/4 c. dehydrated carrots
1/4 c. dehydrated onions
1/4 c. dehydrated celery
2-inch square of tomato leather
To make soup: Add 5-cups of boiling water and simmer until vegetables are tender - about 40-minutes.

I like my American Harvest Dehydrator because I can use one tray for small batches, or extend it to as many as 12-trays for 10-square feet of drying space. I would avoid a dehydrator with less than a 500 watt motor and it would also need an adjustable thermostat that goes between 95-155-degrees F.

-Grainlady

Sally, having a dehydrator allows you to take advantage of less expensive in-season produce, preserve it while maintaining nutrients, & store it without a freezer or the bulk of canning.

What would you pay for blueberries during the Holiday season? More than $2.99/lb.? Dehydrating is just another way of preserving food for future use.

There are just two of us also but we maintain a food storage program. I'm drying fruit/veggies this week that will be eaten months from now. We maintained a one-year food storage program for 20 years; but when we moved to Mystic let it dwindle to 6-9 months. Over the past year, we've increased it back to one-year due to rising food prices & uncertainties we can't control.

I started with the 4-tray several decades ago & that's all I had for close to 10 years. Then, I purchased the 9-tray because I was drying several hundred pounds of tomatoes & apples every season. I think a 4-tray is a good starter size dehydrator.

You also need to decide how you'll use a dehydrator. Whether it saves money, or not, depends on whether you use what you dry? It doesn't save much if you dry 100 lbs. of apples but then continue to always buy fresh. We eat fresh apples only during fall & dehydrated the remainder of the year. Same with tomatoes. I don't purchase ANY canned tomato products.

Everybody's desires/needs are different.

/tricia

Sally, I use mine more for things like onions (which stink up my freezer no matter how many layers of bags I use), or drying food in season. As mentioned, if blueberries are $2.99 now, what will they be in December?

I get celery when it's in season and dry it, the same with onions. In October I can buy 25 pounds of onions for $5 here, if I try to buy them in March, they $1.49 a pound. It's the same with celery, 3/$1 in August, but $1.99 each in January.

The double bonus for me with the big Excaliber is that I can put half a dozen quart jars in it and make yogurt too, just put it in before I go to bed and it's ready when I get up in the morning.

Annie

Annie

You all have given me a lot to think about. Annie, your use of the dehydrator to make yogurt is one of the things that got me interested in them - that and the fact that I do use some dried fruit. I also have some dried peppers around, simply because I haven't used them before they've started drying. Anyway, thanks for all the input. I'm going to see if the library has any of the books y'all have recommended, or any others on drying food. Thanks again.

Sally

A lot of talk recently on being frugal, here is an idea for dehydrator:

A dehydrator is not insulated, if you heave it going for 12 hours, a lot of energy is wasted.

Put a thick blanket or towel on the dehydrator, making sure you are not blocking the ventilation ports, which allow moisture to escape.

You will be saving a lot of electricity.

dcarch

Is there a chance of the dehydrator catching fire if you spray the shelves with OO or vege spray?
They seem to stick to the racks, and I get nervous about leaving the house if I've sprayed oil on the racks!
Thoughts? Nancy

Not very likely, althought anything is possible.

There have been recalls of dehydrators due to fire hazard, but that's due to manufacturer's defects.

If you spray oil on the heating coil while it is on heating cycle, it may smoke, but not burn.

If you spray on the bi-metal thermostat, it is possible that fire could happen if the contacts of the thermostat are corroded and hot spot and sparks happen to ignite the oil on the contacts.

dcarch

Nancy, I use berry screens for everything except fruit and tomato leather....nothing sticks, and no need to oil. Fiberglass (NOT metal) window screen will work. Cut it to fit, wash it good and you're ready to go.

I will be posting my methods of making leather/roll soon.

dcarch

If anyone is in the Boston area, I have a dehydrator I'm looking to get rid of. I've only used it once or twice in the year that I've had it and I'm moving so I don't want to bring it with me. Let me know if anyone is interested!

It's the one in the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dehydrator

We have a Nesco American Harvest Gardenmaster. We love it. Besides all the uses posted above we use it when we bake batches of biscotti. After baking, it dries them out to the crunchiness we like, then we package them up for sale. Drying herbs is so easy. Basil, thyme, sage, all dry well. NancyLouise