Dehydrating food

The warmer months are a great time for me to dehydrate a variety of fruits and herbs.

If you were outside our home, you would see a numerous herbs and other plants spread out on stainless steel trays. I use them for seasonings and some our used to boost my health. Using the sun rays, I’m able to dry the produce. No need to worry about insects bothering what’s spread out, since the items being dried are also insect repellents. Now with other dehydrated foods, I’d need proper covering. Foods such as; banana chips, fruit roll ups, yogurt, vegetable chips, onion rings, come to mind.  If you don’t want to have an insect party,  it’s wise to keep them covered or bring them inside where the only pests you have to worry about are the human and perhaps pet variety. Cold weather is another reason to dry your food inside.

How do you dry foods inside the home? You can use your oven or a food dehydrator. About nine years ago I purchased a 9-tray Excalibur food dehydrator. It seemed to be a tool that many of those that were ‘raw foodist’ who also wanted dehydrated foods seemed to used. While many sang praises for this dehydrator I was never as impressed with it. For starters it was made out of plastic. I don’t have too many objects that come in contact with my food that are made out of this material. Also, the trays seemed especially flimsy. I wanted something that was a bit more durable, but it held nine trays which was perfect for dehydrating herbs and a variety of garden produce. I chose the Excalibur, because the stainless steel dehydrators that I was looking at were much more than I wanted to spend at that time.

When my daughter was a toddler, I found myself not using my Excalibur dehydrator as much and so I sold my dehydrator. Thankfully, I was easily able to sell it on Ebay for almost the price I’d purchased the item a few years before! Mine was in excellent condition, I also had 9 teflex sheets and had even held onto the original box.

Since that time I have had used a smaller metal dehydrator (which I’ve quickly outgrown I might add) so now it’s time to upgrade.

Fast forward to now, and I’m ready to do a lot of dehydrating once again, after a lot of research, I’ve settled on the TSM Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator with 10 Stainless Steel Shelves. As the description states, it’s made out of stainless steel and it’s made in the United States. It took a while to narrow down my search. I was impressed with the customer service for TSM aka The Sausage Maker and was pleased to see they are located in New Jersey, and I believe they have another location in New York.

I’ll still be dehydrating food, until it arrives. I haven’t made the purchase yet. Until that time, I’ll simply go back to my ‘old way’ of drying food inside during the cold months. I’ll be using the oven. I’ll be sure to post some recipes and how I go about doing that sometime this weekend.