I've made a lot of venison jerky over the years but I don't hunt much anymore so haven't made any for a few years. I may make some out of beef roast when we process our first steer this winter.

I love this recipe for zucchini chips: Recipe

I also dehydrate sliced garlic and onion to grind into powder. Dried tomatoes are also very good for use on pizza, stew, etc.

Great for jerky, dried tomatoes, drying herbs, and drying coarse grated boiled potatoes for storable hash browns. I even make my own smoked salt with liquid smoke and dry it out on the patio.

3 medium potatoes barely cooked thru will dry out and fit in a wide mouth pint jar. Want hash browns in the morning? Just pour boiling water over potatoes in the jar and rehydrate them for 10 minutes- then drain and pat them dry on paper towel. Fry up as usual - your guests will not be able to tell they were ever dried!

I found 2 dehydrators @ a thrift store, together I have ....maybe 11 trays. All I've ever done is beef jerky. It's fantastic quality! I just never took the time to dry veggies. Link

Loonlake - thank you for the idea on drying shredded potatoes for hash browns. I've used the Costco dehydrated hash browns before and they turn out really great. They are handy to have on hand at the lake cabin where freezer space is at a premium.

I'm usually scratching my head trying to figure out what to do with the potatoes I have left from harvest when they start to sprout in the winter. Now I know what to do with them!

I found this link that gives good instructions on how to dehydrate them for hash browns or for scalloped potatoes. Link

I've had mine for many many years. I love it but don't use it very much. I like to make the dried watermelon, it just like eating candy.

Funny my friends and I were just talking about this a couple of days ago. We had some really delicious fresh fruit in Oregon this past weekend, and also some delicious dried pear, apricot and blueberries on a charcuterie board. The apricot and pear especially were not dried to a rubbery mess. We decided it was homemade perhaps and not overly dehydrated. Made us want to try it.

I have dehydrated what lonejack has. In fact I have venison jerky in the dehydrator now. Dehydrated strawberries and apples are good to snack on. I always spray my racks with oil so the food doesn't stick.

I usually dry apples in the fall. My whole family loves them, and if I want some for Christmas stockings, I have to hide a batch or two. I use the spiral slicer to make them special, and sometimes have three dehydrators going at once. Not this year, though, since I gave one to my younger DD.

I've dried halved cherry tomatoes (Sweet 1000's maybe). So good, I can eat them like candy!

We tried the dried zucchini candy with Kool-aid flavors--it was fun for the grandson, but not something I'd spend time on again.

Throughout the years I've tried drying peaches, pears, apricots, plumcots, Bing cherries, zucchini slices, apple leather, and peppers, with varying degrees of success. Never tried drying potatoes, but that sounds interesting. I do save the starch from shredded potatoes, but it dries easily spread on a plate--no need to bring out the dehydrators.

ETA, how could I forget my kids' favorite jerky? Turkey ham, sliced thick, with a soy sauce/spice marinade. It's been years since I've made any, but once supplied a whole Boy Scout troop. :)

We buy mushrooms when they are super cheap (Aldi) in July most years, and dehydrate them for winter stews, soups, rice dishes, stir-fries, Italian type sauces, and casseroles. Unfortunately, we did not find any cheap mushrooms this year. We chop, de-seed, and dry more thin-walled sweet banana peppers than you could imagine. Same uses as above.

We also dehydrate tree fruits-- plums and nectarines being our favorite, but also and apples. Apricots are fantastic dried, but so far we haven't gotten enough from our trees to do that. We dehydrate fruit sauces to make fruit leather. There's a small jar of dried cranberries in the pantry; I thought we'd have used it since Christmas, but I guess we forget about it when we bake something they could be added to. A few years ago we made a lot of fruit leather with foraged autumn olives.

There aren't any herbs that we like to dry, as I think they dry with more flavor at room temps, even if it takes much longer.

We have dried our favorite Italian green beans. Those are a hoot. They come out looking like spinach noodles. We chop, de-seed, and dry more thin-walled sweet banana peppers than you could imagine.

We used to do beef jerky, but "some of us" found we ate way too much of it way too fast. Ahem.

I was thinking of cutting up some of our homemade jellies into little cubes to see if we could dry them into gummy candies. Maybe at the lowest temp setting? I think our adjustable dehydrator goes down to 90 or 95 Fahrenheit. Oh, that is my tip if you think you might want to do a lot with a dehydrator: choose a temperature adjustable one.

Matthias, great idea with the mushrooms. That way I don't have to run to the store for fresh ones since they have a short shelf life. Mushrooms are grown local in the old coal mines so they are reasonable most of the year.

One of my DDIL’s has one and uses it a lot! She makes homemade fruit roll ups that her kids love.

If you make dog treats, maybe try this. I get a pork loin roast and then ask the meat counter person to slice the roast very thin. Then I trim off any fat and only have to slice into thin strips. I usually fill up 7-8 drying trays per roast and dry at least 8 hours or over night. I keep one container out and freeze the rest until needed. If you don't have that many trays you can freeze the meat strips for another batch. They are healthy and our dogs go nuts for these things. Everyone is sitting front and center when the container opens! We have potty trained a puppy using these as a high-value reward and it only took a couple days for him to catch on!

There are a lot of things you can dehydrate. I have not done it for a long time. But in the past, I have dehydrated slices of sweet potato for my dog Izzi. She can not have them now. I have watched a lot of YouTube videos on how to dehydrate frozen veggies and some of that does appeal to me and I am thinking I might try it sometime before long. My dehydrators are old and no temperature control to them.

Sue

Thank you all! Now I'm even more excited to start using it! I have been waiting till the weekend to get it set up.

The unit I bought, a Hamilton Beach, has temperature settings and a timer. I had read a few articles and those 2 things were highly recommended. It wasn't super expensive.

I saw someone had said you could take canned dog food and dollop it out to small bites and make your own dog training treats that way. So many things I want to try now!