Taking delivery of a dehydrator soon

[diggernotdreamer]

After much consideration, have invested in an Excalibur 9 drawer dehydrator. Last year, I had the oven going non stop drying tomatoes and they were so good, I want to make more, but it is very expensive using the electric fan oven. Hoping to dry a lot of blackcurrants, herbs, flowers. Does anyone else have one, what do you make in it, have you any advice to offer, anything I should or shouldn't know, thanks

[Odsox]

Yes and I wouldn't be without it now. Very useful for all sorts of things here from drying apricots next month to giving saved pea and bean seeds a final low temperature flourish to make sure they're totally dry.
In fact it will be used tomorrow as it's shopping day and Supervalu have 3 pineapples for €2.00 and I love dried pineapple.

[diggernotdreamer]

Great, thanks Tony, I did wonder about saved seed, it would be handy just to make sure it is properly dried before storing, do you do them for a short while? does it get hot in there? I love bananas and sometimes the local shops sell off ripe ones, guess I could dry those too.

[Odsox]

Peas and beans I do until they "look right", usually about 8 hours on 25c, but I've never done any other seeds.
Yeah, I love dried bananas too, dried until they are leathery the same as pineapple. Other things we've dried are mushrooms when they're cheap, tomatoes (of course), onions when I had a load that insisted on bolting, apple rings and apricots, and I've dried fresh peas too, which are far better that bought dried peas, but I still prefer them frozen.
I did try drying figs but that was a disaster, they ended up like dry twigs, I also tried courgettes but that was a disaster too.

This year I'm going to try making my own sultanas. I have a 2 y/o seedless white grape vine in the greenhouse and this year it has a respectable amount on grapes on it. I did dry some bought grapes to test the theory and they were wonderful with a sweet/sharp taste, not like the bland over sweet Whitworth's ones, so I hope mine will work as I eat a lot of cake and buns

[Green Aura]

Yup, we use ours a lot too. - dulse, chillies, soaked oats, crispy nuts.

The only downside is I've got nowhere, as yet, to give it a permanent home. I'm sure it would get used even more if I didn't have to fish it out from under the table!

[diggernotdreamer]

I'm dehydrating ............ everything, now, I am quite excited (but then I don't get out much)

[Odsox]

Snap !
Our house has smelt of warm pineapple for the last couple of days. Also a first for here, we have a couple of strawberries in there as well, I never thought that dehydrated strawberries sounded like a good idea, but some were on hand and if you ain't tried them you will never know.
Fun isn't it ? ..... and I do get out, went to the big city today but it wasn't as much fun as dehydrating.

[doofaloofa]

I want one now!

Got some specs etc?

[diggernotdreamer]

I splashed out and bought a 9 draw Excalibur, I need to dry lots of tomatoes and herbs etc, I think judging by what I have dried so far, a 5 drawer would have been too small. I looked on Ebay and there were much cheaper ones but I read a lot of reviews and was on another forum discussing different models and this one kept coming up as the best, it was 320 euro, but I hope to get years of service from it, I bought it from Juicers.ie, I thought buy local (Roscommon) and when I tracked it, it had been despatched from Gatwick

[Odsox]

Ours is still being used after drying those 3 pineapples, we bought a load of largish mushrooms yesterday which are shrinking as I type. I think dried mushroom are very underrated and really an essential when you only go shopping once a fortnight.

Ours is a cheapo one compared to yours Digger, ours is a 3 tray Stockli that I see costs about £105.* Plenty big enough for us as all our excess tomatoes are pureed and bottled. It's biggest load is the apricot harvest but that (so far) hasn't required more that the 3 trays as they conveniently ripen staggered over about 3 weeks.

* While searching that Amaz(ing) website for a price, I see that you can now get a 5 tray one for about £34-£35.

[doofaloofa]

Thanks guys

Most helpfull

What kind of size are they?

Are they shed friendly?

[diggernotdreamer]

001 (3).JPG (35.66 KiB) Viewed 5841 times

Adjustable thermostat (85-145 degrees F)
9 Dishwasher Safe Polycarbonate Trays
9 trays of 15"x15", giving 15 square feet of drying area.
600W motor and 7 inch fan.

It is quite a large box, it is sitting on top of my washing machine, you could put one in a shed if you have one that is fairly clean, I may put mine in our little boiler house. My first foray into dehydrating was pretty good, I did learn that things probably do need turning round from time to time to stop them getting over dry like the oregano I did. I have some jars of dried herbs, will keep on drying herbs, flowers, grasses, the smell of the herbs drying is gorgeous, I dried some bourbon roses the other day and it was really heavenly. I love my dehydrator, nearly as much as Doofa loves his sasafras

[southeast-isher]

really cool... i want one now too.

[Odsox]

I have some jars of <snip> dried grass,

You make hay in your dehydrator ??????

Mine is 13" in diameter and about 10" tall with 3 trays on and does 0 to 70c

[diggernotdreamer]

I have some jars of <snip> dried grass,

You make hay in your dehydrator ??????

Mine is 13" in diameter and about 10" tall with 3 trays on and does 0 to 70c

Not quite, I have been drying oats, barley and that other funny thing that I don't know the name of with their stalks on, they fit on the diagonal, they are for dried displays of grasses, I give them to people as presents to put in a vase (if they feed them to rabbits or cattle that is up to them), it's a lady thing as are the dried flowers