Dehydrator?

[Plocket]

Would you recommend having a dehydrator machine, or is it a gadget that will soon end up gathering dust?

I love the idea of making dried foods but can't decide whether to invest in one of these machines or not.

Any useful comments would be much appreciated - thank you!

[boxtops]

what sort of dried foods would you make? do you have a glut of things you need to dry to store?

[EDDIE51]

Far easier to just freeze the surplus. Drying food is time consuming .

[Plocket]

Hi Boxtops and Eddie51. Each year we have lots of strawberries and tomatoes. I don't like strawberry jam and they don't freeze well so I thought drying them might be nice. And although I make a lot of passata I rather like the idea of "sundried" tomatoes.

[boxtops]

I don't fancy the idea of dried strawberries, I don't think they'd be very nice at all :-(

and sundried tomatoes are surely just that - dried in the sun, not in a dehydrator.

[mikey4444]

I bought one nearly 20 years ago. I had great fun with it for a few weeks but it has now joined the ice cream maker and the popcorn maker under the stairs.

It cost over £100 as well, which was quite a lot 20 years, and isn't such a small sum now. It worked wonderfully but it took a few days to make stuff and then about half an hour to eat it !

[EDDIE51]

Can you not do this in a very low oven ? Mine has a 'slow' setting that is 85deg would that do ?

[Plocket]

I like your thinking Eddie51 :o)

Mmm Mikey4444, that's, what worries me. Perhaps I will park the idea for a while.

[Clanad]

I was just going to suggest Eddie's idea... but a setting of about 100 degrees (F) works best for most things... we've done it often.
It's cherry season here in the western U.S and we usually dehydrate a couple of quarts or so making cherry "raisin". They're great to eat plain or add to breakfast cereal or bake in cookies (your biscuits) The two or so quarts will take about 6 hours...

[mikey4444]

Plocket...try borrowing one, if you can....maybe you will be an enthusiastic user...you never know !