Dehydrator machine

[Slatterna]

Are these worth it?

I'm thinking of buying one for Brexit prepping and also just to have a reserve of different foods to hand for lean periods.

Are they easy to use (I'm clumsy and burn pizza)? Do they use a lot of electricity? I've read they can take over a day to dry stuff out.

My dad (leaver) said I should save my money, right enough he thinks it "will all be fine"...

I saved up so long! But it gets a lot of use in the summer as I grow lots. I have it displayed on my kitchen, but no one ever notices! Notice my lambogini of the dehydrating world dammit!

Fantastic.

Strawberry and banana fruit leather- dd already nicking from it. She is a fussy eater btw.

I've got mango in right now and a glut of onions I won't use this week. Cabbage later as I've ended up with 2 large savoy cabbages in the fridge.

Does anyone know if I can do anything with tatties? Would make good soup thickeners I think - not sure they'd be good for anything else.

I've done potatoes in cubes in the dehydrator- worked fine. but I prefer to store them or grow them.

And this weekend, I am dehydrating some home grown celery to add to soups.
What isn't good enough to dehydrate is being boiled up with an old carrot, some garlic and a rogue mushroom for vegetable stock for tomorrow night's paella tea.

I'm going to try and dry mushrooms in my oven this weekend. I've not tried it before so I looked at various websites which all talked about different temperatures and lengths of time.

Decided to go down the scientific route and according to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5462775/ the best way to retain the mushroom dna is at 70c for 3-4 hours. So I'll have a go at that.

I'd love to do pineapple. Yum!

@bellinisurge

Have you dehydrated sliced bananas on their own?

No I haven't. I want to, though.

I'm thinking of giving it a go. My wee one has sliced bananas with his porridge and thought dehydrated ones might work. I'm still a dehydrator newbie though, I've only used mine once (for peppers).

Just experiment. That sounds yummy, btw.

So I've done some banana slices.

They were lovely! I would have preferred them a bit crunchier, but as my son is only 2 I left them sort of chewy.

I put nutmeg on half of them to compare, both tasty.

I googled first - to stop them going brown you need to dip them in lemon juice or something similarly acidic. Again, I did half and half to compare. They tasted the same, so if you're not worried about them looking a bit brown then I wouldn't bother.

Thank you @Huggybear16

One of my cheapest successes has been pears & apples - I cut them into thin segments with the skin still on. I found if I removed the skin, they dried too much & turned into crisps. But, with skin, they stayed slightly chewy at the edge, much nicer. I don't usually rate conference pears, but dehydrated they are lovely.

I am definitely ordering some citric acid, I've been using lemon juice. Much more convenient to use a powder, I suspect.

I finally got around to doing the totties- they're in there right now and look foul. They've browned - don't know if it's just a dodgy bag because I put some in my stew last night and they discoloured too. I think I'd rather use an extra handful of lentils as thickener.

I've got bananas to go in today as the kids won't touch them once the skin starts spotting. Biggest success to date aside run-of-the-mill soup veggies has been the mango. Delicious!

@Huggybear16 , currently doing some banana slices and, because my fussy dd keeps demolishing them, more strawberry fruit leather and more raspberry fruit leather.

Oooh yum! I love fruit leathers. Although I haven't made any myself yet, they're they main reason I got a dehydrator.

A friend's mum made amazing leathers once from cherries and ground almond. They were delicious.

I love strawberry and raspberry too. I doubt there's a fruit leather I wouldn't like though.

Provided your DD doesn't get to them first @bellinisurge, how long do fruit leathers last? Do you store them in kilner type jars?

In Kilner Jar type things with oxygen absorbers. I usually boil the jars for about 10 mins after I have washed them. I cool them naturally and then pop the cut up leathers in.
I have got some in recycled jars that had pasta sauce in before I cleaned and sterilised them.

I'm afraid/am pleased to say they currently last no more than a month because dd demolishes them.

I doubt they'd last a month in my house too. I've got a few pasta sauce jars that I could use - Kilner jars can be expensive. I still have the steam steriliser from bottle feeding my son, could I use that?

I do a fair bit of pressure canning and water bath canning so I have a few Kilner/Ball/Kerr jars. It was an investment to get them but worth it for the use they get. I've used Lucky Vitamin. They are as cheap via there as any other I have found.
Ikea jars are quite cheap too.

I bought some huge (1.5 litre?) Kilner jars from Ebay. 23 for 6 I think it was. They came really well packaged as I was a bit worried about transport. I use these for flour so as to at least contain any weevils. Not cheap really, but certainly comparable to halfway decent plastic storage, these look nicer and should last a lifetime.

I'm very happy I've managed to find a Lakeland dehydrator in a charity shop today- £6.50! Also picked up a chocolate fountain (currently full with cheese fondue) and a yonanas thing (which actually works).

What do you guys use the dehydrated potatoes in? I can get massive bags from a fruit and veg shop, but they end up wasted as we don't eat them quickly enough. Could you do them like smash ?

Wow! Nice find.

Fondue sets are actually a prepper thing too - way of heating soup off grid.
I'd use dehydrated spuds in soup as a thickener.