Food Dehydrators and Why I Love Them!

Food dehydrators and why I love them!  While there are many food items I like to freeze, it has a shorter shelf life. A food dehydrator will keep foods longer plus it helps fill your pantry when you have all those extra herbs in your garden and winter is coming.

Once upon a time, when I was in my late 20’s, my mother and I bought a dehydrator because we wanted to dry herbs and flowers. Yes, I made beef jerky and dried fruits, but I mostly used it to dry the herbs from our garden. Our pantry was filled with little jars of dried thyme, basil, oregano, parsley, and lavender. The downside to this particular dehydrator was that you plugged it in and it didn’t stop until you unplugged it and only had one heat setting.

This particular dehydrator made its way to our new home but was never used again. I eventually gifted this dehydrator to a dear friend who was getting into the craft. Since it had been sitting in the back of our kitchen closet, I wanted it to go to a good home.

Fast forward to 2019 when I became a Pampered Chef Consultant. One of their top electronic cooking tools was the Delux Air Fryer.  Once I saw the demo and all the cool things this product could do, including dehydrating, I was hooked. I once again had an herb garden and filled my little jars with my favorite herbs.

It has multiple trays and because it is compact, dehydrating happens faster.

Fast forward again to 2021 and my birthday. My husband always finds fun gifts and strives to find ones that are useful and will last a long time. We are on a mission to find our homestead next year so he decided that I needed a dehydrator that would dry items on a larger scale. After all, when you are growing your own food and having to store it, you want to do it quickly and not have to spend days or weeks getting through it all.

So this year he got me the Brod & Taylor SAHARA Folding Food Dehydrator.Wow, this is a beautiful machine. Once we got it out of the box, it was super simple to set up and fits perfectly on our counter. Of course I ran to the store to purchase some fruit so I could test drive this puppy.

• 1 apple
• 1 pineapple
• 2 small mango
• 1 papaya

Preparation

I sliced each one up and placed them on the trays. Because I was doing multiple fruits, I set the temperature for 135° and the time for 10 hours. This model has multiple heat settings and a timer so you don’t have to remember to turn it off. I like it because I can set it up in the afternoon and let it go overnight. The scent of pineapple wafting through the house overnight gave me very pleasant dreams of being in Maui.

The model I have comes with polypropylene shelves but has the option for stainless shelves if you prefer. It comes with a nylon zippered case for the shelves and when ready to store, it folds to ⅓ its size so you can just tuck it in a cabinet or in your pantry.

I wish I had some strawberries left from the

Homemade Strawberry Jam. I made the previous week. Next on my list of items to try are dehydrating chicken for our pup, Cadin and of course, making some Beef Jerky. Want to try this dehydrator out for yourself? Amazon Prime Day is June 21-22, 2021

Don’t have Prime yet? You can go to https://amzn.to/2Scbq8T

to set up your account and then get great deals for whatever you need.