What was the disaster, particularly? I have a Excalibur 9-tray dehydrator, because I do a lot of drying fruits, veggies, and meats. Even my first batch came out very well.
For peaches or pears, I pit the fruit and slice it up about 1/4 inch thick. I immediately put them in a bath of cold water with Fruit Fresh added ... this keeps the fruit from turning brown while drying. Take them out of the water/Fruit Fresh bath and quickly dry them on a towel. Then I place them in the dehydrator in single layers, set the temp for fruit, and let the dehydrator do the rest.
If I can help you in any way, please let me know. :)
Mark for dehydrating fruit.
Thanks for that, JustaDumbBlonde. :o)
Love love LOVE my excalibur. Got it toward the end of March of this year. The first thing I dried was a puree from most of my remaining winter squash from ‘11. Hubby buys clearance veggies now and we dry those along with garden produce. Just last week he found mushrooms on sale and I filled the entire dehydrator with them. I put up 40lbs of vidalia onions like that. Dried them about 50% longer than the recommend time and they’re just like funyons. I’ve had to hide them from my oldest. We found pineapples on sale that were overripe already. Those were GOOOOOOD dried.
I’ve been especially happy with the tomatoes though. They’re still just as red and pretty when they’re dry as they were when I picked them. My previous cheapie dehydrator invariably ‘cooked’ them to a nice brownish red that wasn’t very appealing.
In my experience the cheapie dehydrators are a waste of time and money.
Thank you very much for this info. I think my disaster revolved around my $20 dehydrator and the fact that I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m asking for an Excalibur dehydrator for my birthday and another item discussed recently on FR for Christmas! Life is good!