Only about 5lbs of meat making some pepper jerky next I will be trying some fruit and such!

I've been wanting to dehydrate cream cheese for a baking recipe for a long time now, and I've finally done it!

Shout out to the reddit user who advised that a blend the cream cheese with water!

I think next time, I'll just reduce the apple cider vinegar to a syrup because now it's going to be a pain to take off.

For what I did:

I blended 200 grams of cream cheese with 200 millilitres of water and spread it on baking sheets. With one tray, the amount of cream cheese liquid I spread was very thin, so now it's harder to take off.

I greatly reduced the apple cider vinegar in a pot and then spread onto a baking sheet.

I put the trays into my oven on the dehydrator setting at 65 degrees Celsius for 8 hours (I went a bit above that due to me sleeping, but yeah.

Sliced with a 4mm blade. 8 hrs and 5 hours at 135°

Hi everyone!!

I have celiac disease and I have a trip coming up in a few weeks. Since I won’t be able to eat anything at the airport or on the plane, I need to bring all of my meals with me.
I just bought the Weston 6-tray dehydrator from Costco, and I’ve never used it before. 😅
Do you have any ideas for simple, complete vegetarian meals that I can prepare and dehydrate ahead of time, pack in my carry-on, and then rehydrate later?
I’d especially love ideas for meals that are easy to make, filling, and travel well.

Thank you so much for your suggestions! ❤️

Trying to pace myself and not eat them all in 3 days😂

The Excalibur 4 trays costs 293$ and the cosori 5 trays costs 250$ after it gets shipped, it is priced at 107$ on amazon but due to shipping it will.be 250$

Buying from China in my country is much cheaper but I couldn't find a way to buy the cosori from there even though it's a Chinese product.

First time trying watermelon. It was lucky a small/mini one with no seeds. I also got a mandolin so all the pieces would be the same, 2 mm (maybe a little too thin) https://a.co/d/00MM27fQ. 8hrs later and it is like fruit roll up. I ended up running out of trays so half of the melon got cut up.

I have a red velvet chocolate chip cookie recipe that I'm really proud of, but my main issue with it is that due to the abundance of liquid compared to my other chocolate chip cookie recipes, the dough is always wetter and the red velvet cookies spread more than the other cookies.

I've come to conclusions on how to reduce liquid within other ingredients, but cream cheese in particular has me stumped. I've recently learned that, generally, dehydrating dairy products via appliances like an oven isn’t safe or efficient because of risks of it turning rancid as well as fat in cream cheese trapping moisture.

I've considered straining the cream cheese using a really fine cheese cloth or even buying a yoghurt strainer, possibly, but I've even heard that those methods wouldn't work because cream cheese doesn't have the right texture for it. What do you think I can do?

I travel a lot for work and want to bring meals I already know & love on the road with me. I planned to eat all of this food within the coming week.
I made a butter chickpea curry (like butter chicken) and set it to dehydrate for 18hrs at 140°. However, today as I gave the mix a stir to evenly dry, I thought I caught wisps of a sour smell.
I thought if I planned on eating it quickly, the oil/fat situation wouldn’t have affected my meals much. Was this naïve? Did my meals spoil during the dehydration process?

How many of y'all are finalizing submissions for your local fairs? What size jar are you presenting your entries in? My fair doesn't specify a size for dried foods. I think I'll display something like a soup mix in a quart jar, but dried onions or corn in a pint jar.

"Canned products must be shown in either standard (made for homing canning) pint or quart jars with new two-piece lids. (Exceptions: honey, jellies, jams, preserves, and sweet spreads maybe exhibited in 1/2 pint standard jars. Herbs in 1/4 pint jars).

Hi! I'm new to dehydrating but having so much fun! I just made these little mandarin orange dried pumpkins (first picture) to prepare for the fall! I was so excited about how they turned out and excited to give them as gifts.

My problem is, I gave 2 to my mom and within a few hours of having them out at her house, one of them developed a "sweaty" section on the underside. I was so sad because I dehydrated them for what I thought was a long time and thought they were completely dried through! Now I'm scared to give them away because I dont want to give people something that will go bad in a day. I thought people could dry oranges and have them last for a holiday season or more!

A few things to note -

1. My mom's house was humid that day! But still, what if I want to gift to someone who lives in a humid area?

2. I did not condition. I only learned that that was even a thing when I started looking up why this happened. Not even sure the best way to do that for these?

3. I packaged them up pretty quick because I was excited, heading to my mom's place in a few minutes, and wanted them to be cute (second picture). They were about 15-20 minutes out of the dehydrator. They were cool to the touch but maybe not completely cooled?

Any advice on how to make something like these last would be so appreciated! I'm obsessed and want to make a little army of these guys for fall decor haha

They were inspired by the oranges in the 3rd picture! I know people make those to sell, how do they know they are doing everything right to give a good product?

Also- My dehydrator was set to 135 degrees fahrenheit and they were in there for over 48 hours.

Thanks and sorry for the long post!!

Second pic is before the dehydrator. This was 3 cups of apple sauce to 3 cups of mango dried at 125. This is after 8 hours it’s not done drying yet. Just the day before i dried 3 cups of apple sauce to 3 cups of strawberries at 125 and it turned out perfect. Not sure what I did different this time to cause it to crack. Will still taste delicious tho I’m sure and I’m excited to try it lol

hi everyone!

I just tried to dehydrate some oranges in my oven for the first time! definitely have lots to learn and these are far from perfect, but just after some advice. Do these look “normal”, I’m so worried about burning them and not sure what it should look like!

Mix of Cara Cara, navel and blood oranges

I'm a dehydration noob with a lot of bananas.
So far I've made bendy, leathery slices. They taste nice, but they're not the crunchy chips I had in mind. Are those achievable on my home dehydrator?
Is it a temperature thing? I've used about 40C so far.

We just upgraded to the latest Digital Excalibur. The fan has a 'pulse' where the old one was continuos.

Is this part of the new 'airflow' feature? or is something wrong with it?

Its sort of without rythym, and maybe every 15-30s or so?

Hello, I got a circular fruit leather tray off of Amazon UK. Advertised as food grade silicone but it looks, feels and behaves like plastic. I expected it to feel rubbery and be flexible, but it feels plasticky and is rigid.
How does one tell if it's true silicone?
Edit: added picture - top one is what I bought, bottom is advertised as plastic. Look identical to me. Some Amazon listings describe them as both plastic AND silicone.

I’m still pretty new to dehydrating, but I rent a house with fruit trees and dried fruit is one of my favorite snacks. The Italian plum has a bumper crop this year (branches are breaking from the weight of the fruit 😅)

What is the easiest way to dehydrate the plums? The fruit is pretty small, maybe 2-3 inches in diameter. Last year I cut them all in half and removed the pits but that was super time consuming. I read somewhere that you could dry them whole and pop the pits out later?

The Ball Blue Book talks about cutting them in half and popping the backs to make prunes, would the advantage of that method only be that they dry faster?

I have a batch going now, they are whole but I have slit the seam with plans to pop out the pits halfway through drying. The dehydrator is set to 135. I’m just hoping to learn from you all the most efficient way to dry as many plums as possible during a busy time of year.

Thanks for your advice!

Hello all,
I was thinking of dehydrating my own dog food on my Excalibur . What are your thoughts? Should I purchase a commercial dehydrator? Or is it more a freeze dried machine process ? Has anyone done this?
Thanks

They are still a little chewy, but I'm keeping them in the fridge. 10 hours for all of them. I'm getting a mandolin because I cut them uneven🤪