Adore It – Excaliber Dehydrator Critique

December 30, 2011 | Author: Savannah Hayes | Posted in Food & Beverage

I’ve dehydrated several batches of garden vegetables so far this season with great success using this machine. Not to mention the high sodium contents and many use monosodium glutamate (MSG)! I found this one to be a good mid-priced dehydrator – it would allow us to make meat jerky, dehydrate fruits and vegetables, as well as make our own fruit roll ups. And if you leave it on anyway and come back later, the jerky will be OVER-dried and inedible. There needs to be a way to program “30 minutes more” so you can go on with your life. The batch was done in 6 hours. I just put a ball of meat in my hand and flattened it into thin circles.

After some research, I settled on this model as the best combination of size, flexibility and price. I’m glad I did — this little powerhouse has been doing a great job since day one. The only reason I would upgrade is to be able to have a tray where there isn’t a hole in the center (for making raw pizza dough and raw wraps). Before I could only buy what I needed at time so they did not go bad. The dryer didn’t work; it had never been dropped or mishandled. Amazon told us to contact the manufacturer; we did.

There’s a low hum of air, but it’s not disruptive. This is obviously not a product for people who want to do industrial-size batches of drying, but it works very well for me as I love to make my own snacks. This is my first dehydrator and I simply love it. I researched several other products before deciding on this one and I could not be happier.

I marinated my meat the night I got my dehydrator in the mail and used it the next day. Even though this was my first time making jerky it came out great!

I absolutely love the Nesco dehydrator. My old dehydrator had heat coils on the bottom and this one has the heat and fan on the top of the trays.

Spray the special trays lightly with non-stick spray before pouring in the blended fruits, and they peel out without tearing or sticking. I can’t make them fast enough – my kids eat them every day. The book does not provide very much detail on blanching vegetables, which is necessary to destroy enzymes in the tissues and also enhances the destruction of harmful bacteria. Different vegetables have different blanching times and over or under blanching may have an undesirable result as far as loss of color and flavor during drying or storage. We both contemplated on buying the Excalibur one but I have had it a week now and have used it almost every day. I have to say, we should have just bought another Nesco American Harvest because the foods on the back of the trays dried faster than the foods on the front of the trays. Since this timer is rated at 15 amps, should not prove to be any problem with the Nesco-75. Basically the timer is a small knob into which you plug the Nesco at the front; it takes up virtually no countertop space.

I read reviews and researched which dehydrator I thought would be the best. Non Carb Foods.

Author: Savannah Hayes

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