Food Dehydrators

Food dehydrators come in two forms, one is a natural draft dehydrator that relies on natural air movement in the home to dry food. These are very ecologically friendly but they take a lot longer and require careful moderation to make sure food doesn’t spoil. The second dehydrator is electric and uses forced air to dry the food.

Food dehydrators come in many styles

If buying an electric system (which seems to be the most popular), the wattage tells you how fast the unit can dry items (the higher the wattage the less time it takes). However, the higher this number gets, the more energy you’re using too. Besides the wattage you’ll want to look at the size and shape of the systems you’re considering to see how well you can store them and how much food you can dry at one time.

For features, the number of drying trays, screens or fruit roll up inserts, and other accessories like a meat jerky gun often makes or breaks a sale for some consumers. These items should be dishwasher safe for fast clean up. By the way, compare the number of trays to the wattage the system puts out. A low wattage machine won’t be able to effectively dry 10 trays at a time, so having all those trays is just taking up extra space.

The Garden Master Food Pro Dehydrator retails for about 27 pounds

A good food dehydrator includes a temperature control that starts around 90 degrees so you can adjust the system to the type of food therein. Meat jerky, for example, dries best at a temperature around 140 degrees as compared to herbs, which are more delicate and should be dried at about 100 degrees.
Finally if the dehydrator comes with a cooking guide that’s a great boon especially for people who have never tried this method before. In actuality you’ll probably want a larger book than the one provided by the manufacturer for variety, but anything that gets you started safely and successfully is a great feature.

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