Why Use a Food Dehydrator?
If you are open to new experiences- like trying out new things in the kitchen and especially like eating healthy, a food dehydrator is something you may want to look into for creating healthy snacks with much longer shelf life without added sugar or harmful additives right at home. Once you see the results and get used to it, dehydrator may become something you will want to use all the time. With food dehydrators it is not just about keeping the ingredients fresh longer but it is also about maintaining the nutrients- minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients, and healthy enzymes as the dehydration happens between 104 to 109.5 degrees Fahrenheit.
So why use a food dehydrator in your kitchen at home? Primary reason would be drying fruits and veggies for most people. You can also make crackers, chips, cakes, fruit leather, beef jerky and more, without destroying the great nutrition in foods like you would by baking or cooking in general. You do not have to expose your foods to very high temperatures like you would in canning, which means keeping the healthy nutrients and then you can either eat them on their own, use them in different recipes and rehydrate them to restore them into their almost original form. We reviewed a few recent release modern food dehydrator models on this website which you may want to have a look and there are plenty more on Amazon.com.
You have different types of food dehydrators on the market, such as the budget priced circular with round trays stacked on each other with the heat element mostly at the bottom and the hot air being pushed up with a horizontal fan but the downside is the heat is sometimes not distributed evenly according to some user reviews online and some parts may dry less or more than the other parts. Then you have the cubic shaped dehydrators where the heat element is usually at the bottom again and a single or double vertical fans push the heat more evenly and two of the best known brands are Excalibur and Sedona and these dehydrators (especially Sedona) cost quite a bit as compared to some budget models on the market but yes they are good! You can use rectangular dehydrators like Sedona as a very low temperature cooker on its large rectangular shaped trays. You can dry all sorts of fruits and vegetables, like grapes, apricot, aubergine, fig, apple, banana, plum, pumpkin, kiwi, strawberry, mushroom, cherry, tomato and many others, make dried spices, veggie chips, fruit leather, marinated vegetables, beef jerky, gluten-free tortillas and crackers, cookies and brownies without flour and more.