Dehydrators ?

[IKE]

We've had a Ronco dehydrator (like below) for well over over 25 years that still works perfectly......remember the ads back in the day on tv for them ?

We've never used ours for anything other than beef and venison jerky, I believe newer dehydrator brands & models have a small fan in the bottom of them now to make the process quicker but because ours is a older model it doesn't.....rotating the trays occasionally it takes ours about 16 hours to make jerky from med. thin slices of beef or venison.

I was given some venison a few weeks ago and I dug the Ronco out of the closet last night and we started a batch of jerky that should be ready mid morning.

Anyone else have and use a dehydrator for anything ?

 

[retiredtraveler]

We did have one ---- finally donated it a couple of years ago. We used it primarily to make apple 'leathers'. We have some apple trees and aside from making our own apple cider, we would dry some of the apples too.

 

[rkunsaw]

We've had an Excaliber dehydrator for nearly as many years. We use it for drying herbs mostly. I dry Tabasco peppers to grind coarsely for pizza topping and such and grind fine to use as you would use cayenne.

 

[Granny B.]

I've had a new dehydrator sitting on the shelf for years, but finally this year, with our first harvest of Asian pears, I gave it a try. Yummy!

 

[Kadee]

I have a dehydrator. We have apricot ,apple ,peach trees and we dry our own fruit out in the sun (that’s still free at this stage) Our electricity prices in South Australia are the highest in the world
We mainly make roll ups as we call them ,from memory we dried 16 kg of apricots last year.
The wet fruit as we call it ...we cover it as night to,protect from bugs
The almost dry fruit ,we cut it in half when dry and roll up,like mini Swiss rolls

 

[SeaBreeze]

Looks good Kadee, nice healthy treats there! I have an old dehydrator that's been in my garage for years now. I didn't like making jerky with it, too much of a mess and took way too long. Now we just put the oven on the lowest temp and leave the door open a bit and dry it for hours that way, comes out really good. The dehydrator was better for things like sliced bananas, but lost any interest in using it.

 

[n_brown]

I dehydrate jerky, and chili peppers. Tried to dehydrate thin sliced fish, didn't turn out too great.

It's about time for me to do a batch of jerky.

 

[HazyDavey]

We've had one for more than a few years that we use just for jerky.
Made a batch last Summer when beef was on sale at the store.

Ours is a Nesco, it takes about 7-8 hours and we rotate the trays about half way through.

 

[Ruth n Jersey]

Oh Kadee, I love the set up you have and apricots of all things, My favorite dried fruit. I was thinking of giving a dehydrator to my daughter and son in law for Christmas. When they moved into their new home last year they found a thriving fig tree in the yard. We were eating figs in just about everything.

 

[RadishRose]

Dried apricots are so good for you and they're not cheap to buy, either!

I love soft figs (or fig jam) spread on crackers with bleu cheese on top, or the other way around.

 

[Kadee]

Stop.it radishrose you are making me dribble :laugh::laugh:

 

[Shalimar]

I use my dehydrator a great deal. Jerky, roll ups, fruit, veg, herbs etc. Yummy, healthy, economical. The dried tomatoes are to die for.