Questions regarding my dehydrator and lentils...

[vegankristen]

I have an Excalibur 4 tray and it seems that when I turn it to 115 degrees all you feel is the air circulating..no heat. So I put a candy thermometer in the dehydrator and turned it up. It currently says 130 degrees but the thermometer is barely hitting 100. Does anyone find themselves running into this type of thing?

Also, I have a whole bag of lentils that i want to sprout..but what to do with them aside from adding them to a salad? Can I blend them and make a lentil soup (love lentil soup!!) or make some sort of pate?

Thanks!
Kristen

[tracyinfo]

Kristen, after sprouting lentils, you can add them to a food processor and add tomatoes, onion, avocado, chili powder, cumin, chopped carrots, salt/pepper, maybe a touch of olive oil, and make some chili. A chili recipe has been posted before, just do a search to find it. But, the one posted has no lentils. You can just add them yourself. As far as soup goes, add the above without the chili powder and cumin, add some water to the mixture and season with other herbs of your choice.

-Tracy

[vegankristen]

Awesome, thanks for the reply. The recipe sounds delicious.
I'm making hummus today with chickpeas i've already sprouted, but as soon as I finish that off (which won't take long I assure you!) I'm definitely making lentil soup!

Kristen

[SedonaSun]

You can also use sprouted lentils in the Crab Cake recipe in Alissa's book. I just made them and they're pretty good.

[RawTruth]

You definitely need to set your dehydrator to a lower temperature than what the dial indicates. I think Alissa mentioned it in her book -- also a few other authors. Even though Excalibur is the gold standard (I have a 9-tray), for some, the dial is off. So, I just use mine on the lowest as a matter of course. And ... you won't be feeling a blast of heat. Dehydrators produce very gentle heat, not like what we're used to with an oven. You'll mainly just be hearing and feeling the fan circulating the air.

[vegankristen]

On a lower temperature or a higher temp.?

[RawTruth]

On a lower temperature or a higher temp.?

I'm not sure what you're asking (if this question is for me), vegankristen.

[vegankristen]

Oops, sorry Rawtruth. You posted that You needed to turn the dehydrator lower than what the knob says, but if i did that nothing would dehydrate. When I turned the dehydrator up and depended on the candy thermometer rather than the knob, recipes dehydrated at appox. the same rate the recipes call for. If i depend on what the knob says, it takes days to even dehydrate flax crackers.

Hope that makes a little more sense.

Kristen

[RawTruth]

What I meant is this: if the recipe says to dehydrate at 110 degrees, I set the dial at 95 degrees. I do this because I know the dehydrator runs hot, and I want it to stay under 114 so the enzymes aren't killed.

By the way, I learned at a uncooking class recently how to dehydrate on the mesh screen instead of teflex so that it doesn't take 24 hrs. She showed us how to handle the dough (and not to make it too liquid) so it could be put directly on the mesh and that way the warm air circulates rather than being stopped by the teflex or parchment. It was cool -- and now it's much easier for me.

[PixieGreen]

I understand the Excaliber dehydrators have a pretty good warranty. If you bought it within the last year or so you might want to give them a call. I'm sorry I can't help you actually diagnose the problem. In the meantime, by all means adjust the dial by what the candy thermometer indicates. I'm not sure RawTruth understood that your dehydrator is dramatically underheating.

Christa