I had been using a $30 el’ cheapo dehydrator for a while. The trays were all cracking and on top of that it had no temperature control so it was heating the food hotter than I wanted. I had been using it primarily for making Nourishing Traditions style crispy nuts.
Enter the Nesco Gardenmaster food dehydrator (yes, a Christmas present). Just for kicks I grabbed a bag of apples at the store and threw them in. I took 2 and threw them in the blender with juice from half a lemon and poured that onto the fruit leather tray. The others I ran through my apple slicer and put on the other 3 trays.
I didn’t really time it exactly, but I think it took 4-5 hours. I was amazed since my previous unit seemed to take forever. I ran it at 135 degrees for the first 1-2 hours and then dropped it down to 115. The unit is well built and the best part is that it is expandable to 30 trays.
The kids love the fruit leather and the apple pieces as well.
I’ll be trying doing some sprouted wheat flour and maybe even some jerky.
[...] So I returned it, researched a little, and just got this new Nesco one. (By the way, I found this guy, Brian Glass, who has the same one as me, and his site is pretty interesting too.) It is going to [...]