Advice on dehydrator

[asil]

You all are so generous with your time and information. So I have another question for you. I'm going to buy a dehydrator.

OK, which one do you recommend? Is Excalibur really the best? What are the advantages of this one? There are only 2 people in my family; do I need to get the big version or will the smaller do? What are the teflex sheets for?

Thanks so much for any insight you can offer :)

[DotfromOz]

I'd recommend laying out the bucks for an Excalibur. I've got the Nesco which is inconvenient because it's round with a vent hole in the middle of each tray. It works fine and is very inexpensive (less than $40 at Wal-Mart), but I can't make a pizza crust without forming it around the hole, nor would it be as easy to do breads as I can't remove a tray the way you can with the Excalibur in order to have more room for thicker items. I've also read that the Excalibur has a better circulating fan so that you don't have to move trays around as much in order to get things dehydrated evenly. Dunno if that's true. Perhaps, someone who has one can advise you on that.

You could probably do okay with the 5-tray Excalibur for only two people, but I've found that I can fill my Nesco with nothing more than chips, so I'd say the biggest that you have room for and can afford the better. Once you get started dehydrating, you can easily get carried away and want to do LOTS of stuff, which is a challenge if your dehydrator is small.

The teflex sheets are for doing gloppy stuff like fruit leathers. Anything that's very gooey would need to be started on a solid sheet like these and then transferred to the regular mesh trays when it's partially dehydrated in order for it to dry fully.

[tracyinfo]

I have a 4 tray Excalibur and I love it. I don't have the $40 brand, so I cannot comment on it.

The teflex, like someone else said is used for sticky and thin mixtures, that would leak through the trays.

Good luck, Tracy

[asil]

Hey thanks so much for the info. Now I just have to decide between the various sizes of the Excaliber. :)

[Revvell]

When I purchased my dehydrator, the Excalibur 9-tray was recommended even though, at the time, there was only one of me/us. <G>

Reason being, IF you so desire to dry a lot of fruits/veggies at the same time, you can do them ~ at the same time ~ rather than doing them in batches and having it run for days instead of hours.

The last go-round I made Alissa's burger buns, Trotter/Klein's Dragon Crackers, Renee's burgers and some coconut caramel cookies. They all got done w/in a reasonable time and I didn't need to leave it running for days which I would have had to do w/ a smaller version.

Injoy~

Revvell

[DennisMB]

I bought one from ebay for 199.99, it has all the same features as the Excalibur and its stainless steel, which I liked the look of. You can research it at this site http://www.sausagemaker.com (http://www.sausagemaker.com/) but buy it from ebay. Its a lot cheaper there!

Cheers

Dennis