Food dehydrators

My dehydrator has seen constant use for a month. It looks like this will continue for another couple of months.  We are looking to upgrade.  What are your favorite kinds/brands of dehydrators?

Our current is an Excalibur.

Well, lets try another shot. I have been striking out on getting pictures up correctly.

Excalibur is the best brand I've found for home scale dehydration. Haven't really explored much recently though since our Excalibur is running strong

I really liked my 20 year old harvest maid, but it died last year, and they don't make them for the European market anymore (no 230V models) I've not found a replacement for it, the ones they sell here are tiny (can do 2 apples at a time) and low quality. and bigger ones like the one in your picture cost 2 months food budget, totally out of the question :( Since they are very rare here they do not come up used at all. I keep an eye on the commercial auctions if any ever come up there they should be a decent price as not many people want such a large and probably 400V model.

My dehydrator is my oven, which came with it as an explicit feature. (My oven has a convection feature.) Bosch USA says they don't sell and never have sold dehydration racks for my oven, although they're mentioned in the literature for it. Frustrating!

I use grill baskets instead which work.

I had a small Waring dehydrator when we got the stove about 5 years ago. I gave it away. It was okay but not great. The big thing I miss is the fruit leather sheets which came with it and I don't have now.

We bought racks for a different stove and intend to modify them... it's one project in DH's queue.

The Excalibur was always my dream machine, but I never felt I could justify the expense or counter space.

I made one out of a bread rack, bread trays, an electric smoker element, electric car fan and a controller.  In 24 hours it will dry 6 large bread trays but I do have to rotate them once.

I purchased my latest dehydrator from Cabela's and retired my Harvest Maid.  

Hi Jennifer,

Ah, you bring up an couple of important points. The Excalibur was free $ wise.  I held (still have though Covid impacted) a job that, though part time, required a great deal of travel.  I ended up with millions of various kinds of travel points. Of course, those are more than a little skewed as to what they can be spent on. But when I checked ...there was the Excalibur as an option. And, yes, the counter top space is a high price. We have lots of counter space, and it still occupies too much.  It has been moved to a storage area and used there.

Jennie Little wrote:

The big thing I miss is the fruit leather sheets which came with it and I don't have now.

I use my oven dehydrate setting to thicken tomato and other fruit using low wall casserole dishes or if desperate, pie plates. I don't normally go as far as fruit leather, but I'm wondering if you look for a suitably shaped silicon pan whether you could get the effect you want?

I also have some sort of round electric 4 tray dehydrator I was given which I use for things like herbs and fruit, but it's been so humid this summer, I haven't used it as much as I'd like to. It's much harder to get things to dry sufficiently if the humidity is high.

If you have the time I recommend building a solar dehydrator.

Looking for a parts source for a Game Winner M# 1A-DS725. I've tried contacting academy .com, but they haven't responded.

I've only tried it a few times because it's been wet, wet, wet this summer with little sun, but I spent some of my stimulus bucks on a Sun Oven, and that can be used for dehydration. I've got the dehydrator trays that came with the package, and I picked up some silicone baking sheets that fit perfectly for when I'm doing messy things like tomatoes: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07HD91WRY/

I noticed Amazon has some very nice items for use with the Excalibur: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077KTNCZK/ I wish they'd work with my Sun Oven trays, but those are max 9" x 12"

I had TWO Excaliburs years ago that I wound up selling because we were living in an apartment and had no way to grow anything. I'm still kicking myself.

But back to the Sun Oven. The time I had it loaded up, the hardest part was keeping it under 150F. I think the best way to do that is going to be to bring it up to the temperature range I want, then close the solar flaps down to shade the interior some, more like haybox-cooker mode, and let it sit with the glass vented. But the harvest this year has been truly pitiful. All my beautiful tomatoes succumbed to cracking and rot because of all the rain and humidity. We've eaten the okra as fast as I can pick it, so next year we'll plant more. The year I had two 40' rows of okra (an old-time farmer convinced me to plant that much), I almost died from picking it, and we ate on dehydrated okra for three years.

What is my favourite dehydrator?

Well, I've only ever used one type, so I'd have to say it's my 1998 4 runner.

Tons of room, and it didn't cost anything to run it.  If I had more to dehydrate, I could tier racks and really make the most out of the space.

I do live in the desert.....so it probably wouldn't work very well in other places.  I got a tiny amount of mold on a few pieces, but overall it was a success.  I think if I'd set a fan up it would have worked even better.

I do plan on making a "real" one in the future.

So, here is the $100,000.00 question!
How "dry" is "dry" in your estimations?
I have an Excalibur and if I use it I am looking at very long term storage - up to 3 to 5 years when vacuum sealed.
I mostly dry apples and those go down to approximately 5% or less of moisture. Any more than that and you start getting yukky looking product within 2-4 months.
At the 5% or less dryness your apple slices should SNAP when flexed. IF they do NOT snap and you want long term storage - dry them for a couple of more days.
The problem with storage with items that dry is that sharp edges MAY pierce the bags. You may have to double-bag some of the output.

IF you're only looking for instant gratification snacks for that 2 -4 month period they can be left a bit more moist.

If you want to see what really drying does chop up a bunch of carrots into 1/2 inch cubes and toss them into your unit and bake them out totally. They will be about 1/8 the size of the originals that you put in.

Here is an idea for saving some energy. Build a 2 ft. square drying rack for sun drying. Let the sun evaporate a lot of the water/moisture out of your produce then put it into your dehydrator to finish off to the level you want. Handle the food with utensils, NOT your bare hands. Or maybe use good food grade gloves to exchange the produce.

Jesse Glessner wrote:

I have an Excalibur and if I use it I am looking at very long term storage - up to 3 to 5 years when vacuum sealed.  

My experience has been that in my climate, I have to store dried food in glass jars with either metal lids or those clamp-down glass lids. Plastic allows moisture to gradually seep through and our climate is very damp in the winter. I put dried apples in plastic jars one year, but some were in nearly identical glass jars. The glass stored ones kept their "snap", but the others went limp after about 6 months.

The exception is if I'm storing in a fridge - plastic works there because a fridge dehumidifies.

I'm a big fan of the the box fan, with a air filter duck taped to it, which is then set into the heavy duty cardboard box, which has a series of 1x2"s fed through it at various levels, which hold some 1/4" plywood trays (because scrap) and the plywood trays hold the 16"x24" Silpat nonstick silicon mats.

The parts to make one of these are about $30 and an hour of time if you have the wood laying around.  The Silpat mats are expensive at $30 each, and that was 5 years ago...  However, I've used them repeatedly every year, and they appear brand new (when washed...) and will probably last most of a lifetime (if you treat them nice and don't bake with them and they see no direct sunlight.)

The nonstick mats save a great amount of time if you relegate your dehydrating to leathers only. A person can de-pit half a lug of peaches, toss them in a pot with some tapioca flour and/or honey, use an immersion blender to puree, heat to pasteurize, ladle cooled fruit puree onto silicon mats, spatula into mostly uniform layer over mat, and slide into cardboard box fan dehydrator, peel and turn over the leather when just dry enough usually the second evening....that all takes something like 1/3 the hands on time required to do all the slicing and arranging of individual pieces for drying, in my experience.  Once I went fruit leather on silpat, I never dried a fruit any other way (and starting making tomato sauce with rehydrated tomato leather.  At $20 per hour my silpat mats have bought themselves a few times already.  The fruit leather done like this keeps a nice color and tastes super yum.

I should have found way of storing it in glass by now, but I still plastic bag the leather and put it in the freezer.  It seems like there's no avoiding it here; peach and tomato leather kept for more than 3 months sealed but at room temperature lose a significant amount of delicious, and the freezer seems keep all the flavor for a year.  And if you roll that leather up into a tight cigar, you can pack a lot of it away in a small amount of freezer space.  

There's no heater, so I only run this dehydrator if day time highs are 90f+.  Otherwise it take more than 3 days, loses more color.  A person could probably set it up in a greenhouse or car and get it to finish real fast, or do it without the fan.   Although a box fan only needs a few kWh to get it done at outdoor ambient temperature here, and I found a box fan, so I'm box fanning it.

Happy dehydrating

Re Fruit leathers. I had my first attempt this summer and very successful it was too. Trying to keep some back for the grandchildrens first visit post covid next week! What I used was a silicon baking sheet in my oven roasting tray, and left it overnight (on a timer so it switched off after a few hours). The oven is a fan convector type so a good airflow through. Not very energy efficient but it is a nice snack treat.

I bought a Cosori from Amazon this summer and have dried tomatoes, zucchinni and now basil. It works great and holds a lot of food. They also have a team of people that you can email and ask questions which I've done several times.

I have been using my attic with great success. Two days in the attic and squash is completely dehydrated. 8 yellow squash fit in a quart zip lock. Using cookie cooling racks at the moment and nothing else special.

I have one and found they no longer sell parts for repairs as of last summer.  They are nice units as long as they keep running. My fan was turning but the coil didn't light up so no heat. They said the contacts need to be cleaned. This can be done by turning the control dial off and to highest heat setting repeatedly, and fast for at least 50 turns.  Then plug it in and hold your hand over the back screen over the fan without touching the fan of course and if the unit coils light up it should be OK. Otherwise they said it might need a new fuse. I did all that several times and still no heat.  I ordered the fuse.  They could not supply the fuse I ordered so refunded my payment.  Then my nephew sprayed a contact cleaner (?) on the electrical parts and got it working again.  I was so very thankful.  

Great idea for the box fan!  Would you explain how you made the cardboard box hold the plywood?  Did you build a plywood shelving unit that fit inside the box?  Are the trays removable/slide out so produce can be flipped over and rearranged as it dries?  If you built a frame, what did you use?  Thank you.  Maybe some photos would help to visualize the idea.

clarifying my previous comment it is in regard to Excalibur dehydrator. I have the largest 9 tray unit, 2900/3900 model.

@Joseph Treat - do you have insulation in your attic?  It seems there is risk of contamination of the food with dust and insulation particles blowing around and sticking to the food?

The part of the attic that I am utilizing is a floored storage area. The rest of the attic has the blown in type of insulation. I haven't noticed anything on the food but if that is something you are concerned about an old sheet tacked up so that it covers like a tent would keep any nasties off the food while allowing moisture to escape.

Attached some pictures of the squash after dehydrating.

I really want to do this!
I Find lots of plans online.

But i have a hard time desciding wich one to build. Can You recommend some?
I live in a climate with regular rain. Belgium europe.

Faber vanmolkot wrote:But i have a hard time deciding which one to build. Can You recommend some?
I live in a climate with regular rain. Belgium europe.

The issue is whether you have sunny, low humidity days in between. The weather site I monitor doesn't record humidity averages, but I can click on the "past 24 hour" button, and our humidity does interesting things that would impact my choice.

For example: July 16-17, 2021, the humidity went from a low of 57% at 5:00 pm on the 16th, to a high of 95% at 3:00 am and now at about noon, its at 61%. Although today is a cloudy day, recently I've been paying more attention to humidity, and the trend of the high being between 3 and 6 am is noticeable.

Significance: I've started filling my electric dehydrators around 9 am and putting them on the front porch in the sun. I am trying to make bits small enough that by 8 pm or earlier, the food will be adequately dry. I transfer the food from the trays to a metal pan which I put in the fridge to cool, as a "frost free" fridge is essentially a dehumidifier. Once cool, I store in glass, as plastic breaths and allows in more moisture than glass from my experience.

Some of the "Solar Dehydrators" may cope better in humid locations than others. I would love to build one, but I suspect the only way I could get it to work in my climate would be to have it light enough to easily move from a sunny location during the day, to an enclosed outbuilding at night so it wouldn't pick up moisture again at night. Supposedly, some designs have flaps that can close, and systems that naturally slow or stop night-time air flow, but I've also heard from people in this area, that we're not "solar dehydrator compatible" due to our humidity.

This is an area where I'd really like to read about more permaculture experience and ingenuity!

Not sure if anyone still reading this topic, but I went to look for the dehydrator liner sheets I had bought in 2014 for my Excalibur. The sheet size is 14x14 inches. The product is no longer available but this is a similar product like them: https://www.amazon.com/Homey-Flexible-Resizable-Dehydrator-14x14-Inches/dp/B01EIWF25I?pd_rd_w=n8Rrt&content-id=amzn1.sym.adeb688d-35a7-4952-bbb3-fcbab0fec4f0&pf_rd_p=adeb688d-35a7-4952-bbb3-fcbab0fec4f0&pf_rd_r=109SHMKFCJ3W0MS62DHT&pd_rd_wg=XfCXJ&pd_rd_r=c54079e8-2918-41cb-ae17-c00ed054c690&psc=1&ref_=pd_bap_d_grid_rp_0_1_t
The Excalibur is still running and it is nice to have a temperature control to set and keep below 109 deg which I understand is best for preserving the nutritional benefits of the foods.  The company is still in business so I would consider that product. The only upgrade that one might need or want is stainless steel trays which the Cosori brand makes. A friend has one and likes it. It may be smaller than the Excalibur so take into account how much food you will want to dry at a time.

I upgraded my dehydrator finally.  I posted the car pictures above.....

It's not my proudest build looks wise, but it functions as it should.   I don't really even need anything this LARGE, but it was a good way to put some scrap metal I had laying around to some use finally.   Everything was scrap for this build, so it was free, other than the silicon liners which are basically the exact same as the one's linked above (I might have got mine from Temu?).   The solar collector box area is only that big because that's the size of the glass sheet I had.   The dehydrator box is just an old tool box I've had for about thirty years that had been sitting in a corner doing nothing.  I reused some firing strips to make the holders for the shelves, and the shelves themselves are just firing strips screwed into a square the size of the dehydrator sheets.   I can change the angle because the two boxes are hinged.  

I'd like to add a little solar fan to it when I get around to it.

Hey Joshua, that's a really clever way to repurpose a storage bin! Did you screw right thru the plastic sides into the fir strips? Wondering if that will hold up to the weight on each tray over time in the heat. What is inside the solar collection box? I don't understand any of the technical details shown in the picture. How does it work? Could you show pics on how the tubes connect from the one box to the other and how the hinges are attached please?  Your efforts really paid off - look at that nice long line of garden goodness!

Hi Denise, thanks.

For the sake of transparency, it isn't hard to dehydrate where I live.  I live in a climate where just putting the food in the old tool box would work without the giant box of steel junk with glass on it.  It needs ventilation of course, but where I live, during the summer, it's over 100f every day, rarely cloudy, and humidity in low teens.  So just the black tool box out in the sun, with some vents, and of course the trays, would work, I'm sure.  It might be a little slower, but it'd work.  Oh, and the whole thing sits on a sheet of plywood with casters under it (that I got for free on craigslist years ago), so I can move it where needed fairly easily.  
A better version, in my mind, would have the dryer ducting not ever go below the level of the glass, I think it affects the air flow, and slows it down.  Of course with my design I'd need a ladder to get to the shelves, so that seems silly.  Also, I didn't grow the banana or grapes, but everything else came from the yard.


Yes, I screwed right through the plastic sides of the tool box, and right into the *FURRING* strip (don't know why I spelled it wrong above).  Reused whatever screws were laying around in a coffee can, mostly sheet rock screws.  The inside of the box has ridges, so it was almost impossible to get things level, or spaced evenly.  It doesn't matter for the way it works though.  The tool box is a really hard resin kind of plastic (I figure since it's so old it isn't poisoning too much of the food, but it probably is poisoning a little bit from off gassing or whatever?).  I don't think the screws will pull through it, but it's quite possible the box will crack due to the intense uv rays here.  There is so little weight on each screw holding the tray, that I don't think it will be an issue.  The trays might weigh two pounds fully packed, and so that works out to a half a pound a screw maximum?  I'm no engineer, but it seems trivial.  This wouldn't work in a "tote" kind of box from home depot for very long, in comparison

I just threw scrap metal inside the box so it would collect and store heat.  There's scrap chicken wire, scrap metal from projects, metal stuff I haven't touched in over a decade (but refuse to throw away), etc.  Just junk to store and hold heat.  I spray painted all of it black after I threw it in.  When I say threw it in, that's literally what I did.  No strategy involved whatsoever.  

It's just basic knowledge about how heat works?  Heat rises, so my thought is the sun heats the metal, the metal releases that heat up to the glass, the glass prevents the heat from completely escaping and directs the moving hottest air to the highest part of the box.  I drilled two holes big enough for dryer ducting (and the dryer ducting ports to attach the duct to).................

screw it.  I'll make a video in a little while.  It'll hopefully make more sense.

Hopefully this makes more sense.



and one more relevant picture.  

I have since persuaded the local handyman aka Hubbie to build me a Walk solar dehydrator and am quite pleased with the results for drying leaves, and apple rings but have had little success with anything very juicy like tomatoes or plums. The difficulty is a very humid climate (we had a huge excess of rain this summer) and restricted sunlight window. We have a lot of trees around and are also on the east side of a hill so lose the sun quite early even in summer.

I think I have a better location to try next year and 🤞more sun will help, so will keep experimenting. It’s all good fun! Can I ask what sort of thickness of squash or courgettes has anyone tried for drying? And has anyone dried green beans?

Chris Whitehouse wrote:I have since persuaded the local handyman aka Hubbie to build me a Walk solar dehydrator and am quite pleased with the results for drying leaves, and apple rings but have had little success with anything very juicy like tomatoes or plums.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a Walk-style dehydrator built on a tubular support so it can swivel to follow the sun, and one on wheels, although I think the wheels were just for putting it away empty in the winter, and getting it out in the summer.

I have similar climate issues (trees blocking sun and humidity), so I've been putting up with using electricity in the short term. However, if I get to building a solar one, I've decided I'd either need the Walker style with truly functional wheels, or the rocket mass heater type they built at Wheaton's Labs.

We have a 10 tray Magic Mill (basically an Excalibur knock-off), that I use year 'round, and it sometimes runs 24/7. I love this thing, but want a second one. We also have a 5 shelf, hanging net one, that I like for its portability, but not so much for outdoor use, because of its susceptibility to ambient humidity. It works way awesome, during the shorter dryest part of summer, or in the living room in winter, with the woodstove going, but in our soggy spring, or the humid part of summer(most of the summer). I want to build a solar one, but there are so many outdoor projects in my lineup, that it will be a miracle, if it happens in the next 3 or 4yrs.

Skandi Rogers wrote:I really liked my 20 year old harvest maid, but it died last year, and they don't make them for the European market anymore (no 230V models) I've not found a replacement for it, the ones they sell here are tiny (can do 2 apples at a time) and low quality. and bigger ones like the one in your picture cost 2 months food budget, totally out of the question :( Since they are very rare here they do not come up used at all. I keep an eye on the commercial auctions if any ever come up there they should be a decent price as not many people want such a large and probably 400V model.

Skandi, I too had a harvestmaid and replaced it with the ezi dry that is made here in NZ but available in Europe.

The trays are  the same size as the Harvest maid and I have stacked up to ten when drying apple slices.

The trays need to be rotated when stacking that many.

https://www.ezidri.eu/

Joshua Bertram wrote:What is my favourite dehydrator?

Well, I've only ever used one type, so I'd have to say it's my 1998 4 runner.

Tons of room, and it didn't cost anything to run it.  If I had more to dehydrate, I could tier racks and really make the most out of the space.

I do live in the desert.....so it probably wouldn't work very well in other places.  I got a tiny amount of mold on a few pieces, but overall it was a success.  I think if I'd set a fan up it would have worked even better.

I do plan on making a "real" one in the future.

Here in western NC I used our car as a dehydrator for apples. It worked great! I put slices on enamel mesh trays. Typically the drying took 1.5-2 days. The dried apples are fabulous!
What did you put your foods on? I can’t tell from the photos.

I had an Excalibur for years, but I read last year about how the plastic box leaches chemicals when heated, which kinda makes sense. It had always bothered me a bit. I finally sold it and bought myself a TSM dehydrator, stainless steel box and trays. I do a lot of dehydrating for hiking food and also to preserve the harvest, so I get a lot of use out of it. Less as I get older, no kids around, etc, but still, I like to preserve what I can.

What I liked about the Excalibur that the TSM does not have is the temp knob. TSM just has a lo to hi knob, so I have to guess or put a thermometer in there. Otherwise, I like it.

I recently purchased a Samson "Silent" dehydrator with 9 stainless trays, this is my second dehydrator. It keeps the set temperature at the desired level, to the exact degree. it has a very good sensor and a built in feedback loop to adjust the heating power which is a refreshing change. I also really like the stainless steel shelves, they are very durable.