does anyone use a dehydrator?

[shooter]

 anyone use a dehydrator much? im looking at a Excalibur Deluxe 301 Food Dehydrator - 9 Tray, it has 9 15 by 15 inch square trays.  that's almost 14 sq ft of space,

   what all do you dehydrate. Im going to do onions, tomatoes, chive, aregano. and what ever else I can find

[bkoenig]

I used to, but mine broke last weekend....

I do a lot of fruit, like pineapple and strawberries.  Tomato slices work great.  You can even season them before you dry them.  They're great for cooking.

[Mudinyeri]

I have the Excalibur 2500.  We've mostly dried fruit.  It has worked well on everything but blueberries.

[GreyGeek]

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00B9F7WJW/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1433939322&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX110_SY165&keywords=best+dehydrator&dpPl=1&dpID=41xCzULKOoL&ref=plSrch

Works for us, especially the jerky setting.

[Mudinyeri]

Works for us, especially the jerky setting.

Any good jerky recipes?

[unfy]

I make some jerky every so often.

And it's good enough that "strangers" buy it from me too (ie: folks down where I have my transmission done, etc) .

I use just a small nesco dehydrator that does air movement plus a tiny bit of heat.  Nothing terribly complicated.  It comes with... 4 trays I think ? Can do about 5lb of jerky on it without too much fuss.  More than that is pushing it though.  Takes about 7-8 hours for 5-6lb of meat.

Am I willing to post the recipe ? I dunno .  I spent many batches perfecting it.

If I make another batch soon, I should go find Rod or Mud and share heh.


edit: and yes, the recipe is hanging on my cubicle wall here at work heh

[RLMoeller]

If I make another batch soon, I should go find Rod or Mud and share heh.

uh, yeah!

[Mudinyeri]

Am I willing to post the recipe ? I dunno .  I spent many batches perfecting it.

If I make another batch soon, I should go find Rod or Mud and share heh.

Maybe trade that recipe for some (already provided) Kydex advice ...?

[GreyGeek]

Any good jerky recipes?

Start with 5lbs of Buffalo chuck roast  Buffalo meat is very lean. Cut into strips 1 1/2" wide, 1/4" thick and about 12"long, or as long as your roast is.  We use our circular meat slicer to cut the roast into 1/4" slices and then a knife to cut the slices into 1 1/2" strips.  Then rub every piece with a salt mixture which contains food grade Sodium Nitrite and marinate for 24hours in the fridge.  Dehydrate at 165F until the jerky snaps when bent in half but doesn't break.  Store in a jar in the fridge.    Super Saver and other grocery stores offer several varieties of jerky salt pre-packaged for 5 lbs of meat, along with instructions for use.  I never experimented with recipes.  Sodium Nitrite dissolved in water scavanges Oxygen to form Sodium Nitrate, which retards oxidation of the jerky and retards bacterial growth.  It also hinders erections.  Non-food grade Nitrite can contain toxic heavy metals.   I prefer the traditional jerky salt mixture.

[unfy]

edit: doing a small batch just to share with folks...

It'll finish this afternoon.  It's better if ya let it rest a couple days after dehydrating, so on Wed plan on sharing with a few people (looking at you Mud, and maybe folks at Moeller Arms ?).

Haven't decided about sharing the recipe or not heh.  GreyGeek's synopsis is the basic start to jerky

[shooter]

I ordered my dehydrator yesterday,  I bought a Excalibur Deluxe 301 Food Dehydrator - 9 Tray  the trays are 15 by 15 inches square. its about 14 sq ft,   gonna be trying some stuff, but bought it mostly for stuff from the garden,
   Pretty nice machine, front open, also has the  controls in the front,

[unfy]

Shooter: A coworker has something similar.  He's "okay" with it, not overly enthralled though.

While I have some reservations with the cheaper $35-$40 dehydrator you see in the pic above, it generally works fine for me.  Haven't tried it on non-meat yet, though.  Granted, most modern dehydrators are glorified hair driers heh.

I wouldn't mind something that was a bit more "balanced".  With the one shown in my pic, the fan and heater coils are in the middle.  Therefore things in the middle will "cook/dehydrate" faster.  This means I gotta flip things on the trays at least once, let alone re-ordering trays.  If I could simply rotate trays 90 or 180degrees (that looks possible in your machine), that'd make things much simpler.


After a day of rest, I'm not entirely convinced about this batch.  I think it was possibly over dried a bit.  We'll see how the next day or two goes.

[Mudinyeri]

Oh, man, that's goooood.

Thanks, unfy.

[RLMoeller]

Yes it is! 

[unfy]

Welcome guys - glad you like it.  And yes, I am open to suggestions.

Now I just need to decide if to post the recipe here within the next week heh.  Since you two have a copy of it, I should prolly post it anyway but I just can't bring myself to do so yet

[Mudinyeri]

Welcome guys - glad you like it.  And yes, I am open to suggestions.

Now I just need to decide if to post the recipe here within the next week heh.  Since you two have a copy of it, I should prolly post it anyway but I just can't bring myself to do so yet

Your secret is safe with me.

[depserv]

Just now saw this thread and had to reply.

I've had a dehydrator for many years and have used it a lot.  I don't remember the brand; it's just a cheap Walmart type with round trays but it works very well even after all these years.

I've made jerky a few different ways but finally came to realize that the best way (to me anyway) is to get the leanest hamburger I can find and roll it out thin with a rolling pin.  I mix in various herbs and spices, and never kept notes because I found out early on that as long as I use the right amount of salt and don't overdo the cayenne it's good. 

I've dried tomatoes, sliced thin.  Spray them with a little olive oil and season them with a little salt (very little; since they shrink so much it's easy to overdo it), garlic powder, chili powder; I've even used curry powder.  If you leave them on until they're crunchy they're good but some people like them leathery, which takes quite a few hours less. 

The other things I do with tomatoes is dry them with no oil or seasoning until they are crunchy, then turn them into powder in a food processor.  They keep forever like that and you can mix it in with soups and stews or use as a thickener; it's the next step beyond tomato paste.

I've made Kale chips on the dryer, seasoning them the way I season tomato chips.  I've also dried Kale, Collards, Swiss Chard, and Mustard greens, and turned them into powder by running them through a screen.  They keep forever and are good in a smoothie.  A tablespoon of powder is roughly equal to a leaf the size of a dinner plate.

I dry cayenne and pulverize it in a food processor then run it through a screen to get the seeds out and it keeps forever.  I've done the same thing with habaneros.

This is one of the best ways to preserve food because the biggest part of the food's volume is usually water, so what you store takes up very little space.  As long as it's completely dry and stays dry I've had things for a few years with no sign of them going bad.  And this method does a good job of preserving the food's nutrition.