Okay, chickies who have dehydrators, I want details!

What brands?

Models?

What works well? What doesn't?

I read this about Excalibur brands vs. the cheaper ones...what do you guys think about it?
Has anyone tried Alton Brown's method?

I'm drowning in tomatoes and would love to do a bunch of dehydrating...herbs, sweet potatoes for me and the pooch, etc. Help!

I have a Nesco dehydrator. Looking at their website I think it's an FD-60. The best feature is that the fan is on the top, so anything dripping drips harmlessly onto a piece of plastic at the bottom. I killed my last dehydrator many years ago when too much cherry juice got around the heating coils and it burned out.

I picked that specific model because at the time it was the model that took the largest number of trays with a top-mounted fan and adjustable heat. I think at the time the Gardenmaster did not have one. Even now it looks like only the very expensive digital version has a top-mounted fan. Although, 12 trays are enough really. I can put 30-lbs of cherries in at once, and that was the most important feature. During the season I pick them up fairly local in 30-lb pails, canning some, drying others.

I've done cherries, tomatoes, herbs, zucchini (as chips) recently. When I first got it I did fruit leathers and such, but they're way too much like candy for me so I don't do them. I've done plums, apples, apricots, peaches, corn, and a few other vegetables as well. However, in this house we don't have a big garden so I'm not as much into buying things to dry. At the last house pretty much everything I dried was something we grew.

I have a top mounted fan and heat in mine. Tomatoes sliced 1/4" thick take about 8 hours to dry.

The model I have is Nesco by American Harvest. Not sure of the model but looks like this . I got a special "Best Deal" online and paid $81.08.

what the heck is a dehydrator? I was thinking a person who's dehydrated, LOL

I'm having a hard time thinking what I'd use dehydrated veggies for?????

I also have a Nesco Gardenmaster. I went for the most power for the dollar I've heard the Excalibur are great but they are pricey. I love mine. It does have the fan on the bottom but I have no problem with air circulation or dripping. I have 10 trays (couldn't fit more on my counter) and they all dry evenly.

Loriann - First it makes for easy, smaller storage when saving food for later use. Second it makes great snacks - dried fruits, veggie chips, fruit leather....

added: I just use the leather tray in the bottom when I've got really,really wet messy stuff drying above. I've only had to do that once and it was more of a clean-up issue (extra juicy peaches I think).

If you're growing your own veggies, they're great to store for soups. If you slice them and dry them crisp you only need crumble them into your soup stock. Zucchini (which I normally hate) makes pretty decent chips. You dip them in a mixture of soy sauce and water, then sprinkle with garlic powder. Dry them until they're crisp and they're a great snack.

I dry cherries to use in baked goods (instead of raisins). Sour cherries are lovely and tart used that way. As well, I buy fresh pitted cherries pretty close to home and I then know there's no sugar in them.

I use dried tomatoes mixed into sauces, or salad dressings, and I used to add them chopped up into meatloaf. Although I need to find more things to use them in as I don't seem to be going through as many as I dry.

I use tons of dried fruit in salads (green and mixed, like fruit), baking, oatmeal, and sauces. It would be much cheaper (and much more likely to be sugar-free) if I had a dehydrator than having to buy them pre-dried from the store.

I can't find dried cranberries without sugar. Drives me nuts! Especially since my FIL has about 30 lbs of frozen cranberries that he's dying to get rid of. If I had a dehydrator I could make a million craisins!!!

As for veggies, not only can you make snacks for you (zucchini chips, sweet potato chips , etc.) but you can also make them for your dog! Thick, dried sweet potato slices are a great chew toy for your dog--and they cost $2.99 a slice near me! Can you imagine how cheap it'd be if you could make them yourself? I think Lisa/Weezle's dog can only have those because of health issues, right? I think she mentioned making them herself when she ran into high expenses with buying them.

Plus, if you have a garden, belong to a CSA, or go to farmer's markets in your area, you can dry the tons of extra produce (zucchini or tomatoes, anyone?) you get, which saves you lots of money in the end. Sundried tomatoes are rarely dried in the sun--but they taste just as good.

So, there are lots of reasons for a dehydrator!

Thanks for all the comments everyone!

I'm interested in what kind of dehydrators people have as well. Dh and I are trying to eat locally and cheaply and we want to grow and preserve food next summer (we moved this year and couldn't have a garden.) I already can as much as possible.

I know Mother Earth News has directions to make a solar dehydrator, but I'd like an electric one too.

I have a Nesco too, and I love it. I've got 8 trays, and I think it recommends up to 12. I like that the trays are easy to find in Walmart, Fleet Farm (or Farm & Fleet), and sometimes Target or Shopko.

My first dehydrator was the Ronco dehydrator (no fan and no temperature controls). I loved it because I didn't know any better. It was a discard from my parents, and I used it alot.

After using the Nesco, I would never go back to a dehydrator without a fan and temp controls. If we lived in a larger apartment or house, I would want another one, because I've used my Nesco primarily for jerky - and as a result, I think anything else would absorb the liquid smoke. I don't know if it's because some of the marinade did drip into the housing, or because the plastic trays absorbed the smell of liquid smoke, because I do wash them very well after using (and again before using the next time).

I don't know about brands, but I love dehydrated watermelon and strawberries as snacks. Just slice whatever you do pretty thin so that it dehydrates quicker. I just had a cheap crappy one and it worked great for fruit.

My problem is that the fried stuff is so tasty and so tiny that I snack on it with Impunity. (Impunity is my long-lost twin - we were separated at birth.) I ended up eating the whole batch of zucchini chips and followed that three days later by munching away on 9 peaches in an afternoon!

See, I know you guys have ESP I was just thinking about dehydrators but I had questions - like: how do you store your dried "stuff"? Do you have to freeze it after it's dried or can you just put it in airtight containers and stack it the pantry?

Depends on what you're storing. Some things store well in air tight containers in a cool dark place. Others really need to be vacuum sealed or frozen.

If you can manage a high volume email list the absolute best resource I've found is the preserving-food group on yahoo groups. Tons of info, great files full of everything you want to know, and members who genuinely don't mind answering the same questions over and over (hey, kind of like here!). I am not kidding about the volume though!

That's why I vac seal them right away. I have no will power, I'm just too lazy to drag the sealer back out to re-seal a package I've opened