What's your favorite food dehydrator?

[baby-makes-3]

I saw one at a yard sale for $5 and didn't get it, and now I'm kicking myself. I don't remember the brand, but it's got me looking for one in time for summer's bounty to be here and to be able to preserve some fruits/veggies.

Do you have a dehydrator and which one do you prefer?

[Honey693]

We have a Nesco and it's pretty good. kind of loud and gets really hot, but it gets the job done. The only thing I've made in it so afr though is fruit and beef jerky.

[cristeen]

I have a cheapy and it works okay - it's something similar to a Ronco product. I will say that it is relatively loud, although it's just white noise. And the way it's designed makes for really long dehydration time on anything containing a lot of liquid (like whole grapes).

With the fan on the bottom, there are definite hot spots, the bottom tray can burn with certain fruits (like kiwi or banana), and if you don't rotate your trays, half the tray will be dry and the other half will still be raw. The upper trays (I have 8 trays but have learned not to use more than 6) dry much slower than the lower ones. Overall it works okay for the price (it was free), but if I had spent more than $20 on it, I'd be ticked off.

When this one kicks the bucket (the trays are pretty flimsy and after only a year of regular use, at least 2 trays are starting to fall apart), I will be spending a bit to get a better model. During the summer I'm using it at least twice a week to dehydrate the excess fruit from the CSA. And during the winter I'm using it about once a week, so it sees pretty heavy use around here.

[laurabfig]

I ate raw for a while and used the Excalibur dehydrator. These are the top of the line dehydrators. Got mine used on Craigslist. It worked great, but sounded like a small fan was on in the kitchen when I was using it for hours on end.
I ended up re-selling it on craigslist b/c i just didn't use it enough to make it worth keeping and taking up so much space in a little kitchen.

[ikesmom]

I am curious to hear the responses..I also bought a Nesco because it was on markdown and we only have 2 major stores near where we live. It takes a looon time to dry ..I am not sure if that is just this model or all of them

It is loud , but that doesn't bother me because my house is not quiet anyway and we have fans running most of the time too.

We have had success with kiwi, mango, pineapple, apples, bananas, and peaches

Grapes just took too dang long..I didn't blanch them though so maybe I should try that

I am looking for good veggies ideas if anyone cares to share