ISO food dehydrator help

[babetoo]

i ordered one from amazon last night. will take a while since i used their no chg freight rate and it takes a bit longer than snail mail. but i saved ten dollars in shipping.

anyway this will be the first one i have ever used. any hints or information you can give would be helpful.


not to interested in jerky right off the bat. want fruit for healthy snacks and christmas gifts.

thanks in advance.
babe

[pacanis]

I wonder if there's any vids at QVC that shows them being used. There is for my pressure cooker. Or maybe Ron Popeil (sp?) has something. Does he have a website (I would imagine)? His old infomercial on food dehydrators almost had me buying one. I love dehydrated bananas more than fresh ones. I bought a dehydrated trail mix from some youth thing that came by, it had dehydrated fruit, nuts and M&Ms in it. Man that was good. The chocolate really added something.

[mcnerd]

Buy the book "Mary Bell's Complete DEHYDRATOR Cookbook". It is the bible for everything dehydrated. Check at Amazon.com and there might be a used book if you want to save money.

It covers everything that contains water and therefore able to dry in the dehydrator.

[Michael in FtW]

Babe - when you get it - READ the instructions that come with it before trying to use it - and make sure you put them away in a place where you can find them in the future.

Although dehydrators all do to same thing - different dehydrators are made differently - timing may be different, some have variable temps, some have variable vents affecting air flow/temp/time ... you need to read your manual to get a basic understanding of how to use your particular dehydrator.

While you're waiting for it to get there, and before you go out and buy a book - you might want to read some reliable info for free ... The National Center For Home Food Preservation has a section on Drying foods.

[babetoo]

thanks guys for the good advice.

michael reading the manual and saving them is what i always do. have a special drawer for all the product manuals.

i am looking forward to having it.

babe