Dehydrator to preserve allotment produce

[AtlasPine]

Do you use a dehydrator to preserve any of the food you grow? I’d love to know more. How do you rate it? What do you put in it and is it worth the space it takes in your house? Thanks!

Yes, but only for courgettes, which we use in soups and stews through the year.
I won it in an allotment raffle 🙂
Found it didn't work well for tomatoes and we don't really have enough of anything else to bother.

I've never tried it myself but I believe a fan oven on a low temp can be used to dehydrate stuff.

There's probably something on YouTube.

I've got one from Andrew James, it's quite bulky so you need space to store it. I’ve dried courgettes, apples, orange slices, pears etc, I also make dog treats from sliced sweet potato. I've also dried frozen sweetcorn etc as it takes up so title room in a jar compared to a freezer. I’ve also dried tomatoes , and other root veg. You can dry most things, except potatoes are not supposed to be very good.

We've got a BioChef Arizona 10 Tray, which is big, so we store it in a cupboard in the workroom when not in use. It's brilliant at dehydrating pretty much anything. I turn all my green tomatoes at the end of the season into a powder after dehydrating them, and then use the umami powder in practically every savoury dish. I've dehydrated plums before and they rehydrate wonderfully. We've also dehydrated apples and pears and other fruits in the past. I dehydrated aubergines one year, but find they're a bit weird to cook with when rehydrated, so won't do that again.

I have made aubergines into aubergine bacon. I think with soy sauce and smoked paprika. Nice enough to add to a salad, but in no way bacon.

We use ours a lot. Mainly for fruit. It saves masses of freezer space.

Raspberries dry surprisingly well. I thought they would collapse, but they keep their shape and end up like freeze-dried ones. Halved cherry tomatoes and sliced apples are very easy and successful. Blueberries and currants take a surpringly long time unless stabbed.