Dehydrators rank among the top of the list for gardeners and farmers who have abundant harvests of fruits and veggies which preserve well with dehydration.
Dehydrators can be used with many fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, jalapenos, peppers, kale, plums, apples and the list goes on. They will shrink the produce which make its very easy to store in a freezer for quite some time.
Depending on the produce and taste preference, some will like the finished product better than the original; such as one who prefers dehydrated plum slices as a nice chewy candy-like substance.
Buying a Dehydrator
Dehydrators come in all sizes and price points. For small ones, they are available at almost any place that sells cooking items. They work well, until you need to step up and dry more items at once. When that happens, larger tray dehydrators like the 9-tray Excalibur will dry over 3 times more food more evenly, and quicker. These will cost around $400 plus.
Again, once the 15-square feet larger dehydrators are not enough to work with, we can opt for a commercial size machine. At this point, that would be a lot of food, cutting, etc…something more like a part time job each day drying copious amounts of food on a farm or a business dehydrating items.
Dehydration Strategies
Once a certain fruit or veggies becomes abundant, we can slice them up and keep our dehydrator running full time. If we have more than we can dry, we can store the overflow in the fridge or freezer until we can deal with them later on.
