Dehydrator

[Thomas3344]

Hi,
I am looking for a few answers to a deydrator. Please feel free to answer only the ones you have time for. Thank You.

1) Convience is important to me. When I am dehydrating/cooking the food, do I need to be home in the house or can I go out. I heard things have to cook in there real long.

2) Is there any more preparation time (actually preparing food) than with the convential oven.

3) Can you cook anything in a dehydrator that you can cook in a regular oven. If not what limitations are there.

4)Last, because the food needs to be in there a long time and I am sure there is not much space has anyone found that they are not practical.
Thanks Again

[goobygirl]

1. No. You do not need to be in the house.

2. I do not think prep time is longer than cooked food. Actually, it's less than if you were to make "real" cooked food at home. The thing is, most people don't. They get soup stock from a can or carton, soup from a carton, noodles from a box, dinner from the freezer.

Now if you had to really prepare all of the stuff for cooked food ahead of time, you'd be spending hours and hours.

3. Not sure if I can answer this, but you can dehydrate in your oven, just use lowest setting (about 100 degrees) and see if you like it before investing in a dehydrator.

4. I put my dehydrator out on the sun porch (even in the winter). Then there's no noise and it's easy to get to. If you need space, put a cutting board on top of your stove and use that space to place the dehydrator.

[Revvell]

I got by "space" you mean the space INSIDE the dehydrator, now how much the dehydrator takes.

Please clarify your question as there's only so much space inside an oven and the whole thing takes up more space than any "d". So, if it's the space the "d" takes, then, cover your oven and put it on top of that. If it's space inside the "d", then you get a 9-tray Excalibur and you'll have room for whatever you want to dehydrate at any given time ~ almost.

[Thomas3344]

Thank you,
for the answers both of you.
I was asking about space in the dehydrator so that answerd my question.

My oven dials dont work properly but I am going to look into the suggestion of using my oven before I buy one.

1-Can anyone tell me if the food when it is done in the dehydrator tastes the same as if it cooked conventially.

2-I enjoy quiena and sometimes orgainic brown rice and a couple other grains, can I prepare them in dehydrator.

Thanks again,
Thomas

[juliebove]

I have a Nesco. Although you do not technically need to be there while it works, you do at times have to rotate the trays in it because the stuff on the bottom dehydrates more quickly. How often you have to do this depends on what you are making.

The unit as it is sold is very small and wouldn't be enough for me. I bought extra trays and sheets for it. I bought a couple too many because only so many will fit under my cabinets.

I did buy some trays that extend up higher for taller things but I never quite figured that part out.

[Thomas3344]

Thanks Julie,

Can anyone comment on this about rotating the trays while food is "cooking". Being home for 7 to 12 hours at a time are not usually an option for me Somedays I am working 10 hours day.

I am interested in buying one but dont want to invest if I had to sit in the house for 12 hours at a pop.

Thanks
Thomas

[Veganforlife]

I put my "recipe" in the dehydrator and either go to bed, or leave the house, or sometimes I'm there.
I pop 'em in and fah git about 'em!!!

As far as food tasting like cooked food? To me it tastes better!

[kaybee]

thomas-- unfortunately a dehydrator is not like an oven; you wont be able to cook quinoa or brown rice in there and no, most foods do not come out the same as they do in an oven. it just doesnt work the same. we get the texture of foods softening like baking when we use an oven because the cooking breaks down the cell walls in the food (and causes other changes, including reducing the nutrient content). dehydrating is meant to sort of maintain the integrity of the food, so we dont heat above about 115 degrees. this is enough to soften some foods over time, to get some greens to wilt and some other foods to soften, but mostly it functions by taking the water out and drying the food, so as to make crackers crispy or the ingredients in them stick together. but if you live in a damp climate and use your dehydrator to make crackers or something, and dont take them out as soon as theyre done, theyll end up soggy again really quick, which doesnt tend to happen to baked crackers nearly as quickly.

the dehydrator is a tool that helps us make some foods more palatable, increases the variety of foods and recipes, and helps many of us stay raw because it can TO SOME EXTENT replicate some textures similar to cooked food (i.e. crackers, cookies, kale chips, etc). but its really not the same, and the textures, etc just arent usually going to be the same as cooked (for example you cannot make something like regular bread in the dehydrator; you will not find anywhere in raw foods the sort of fluffy yeast or sourdough bread because it isnt possible to make it raw, even with the dehydrator)

so, not to discourage you, but I dont want you to invest the money in a dehydrator thinking its going to "cook" your food the same as the oven and give you the same sort of results as an oven would. its generally not.

that said, i have heard of people putting 1 or 2 lightbulbs (in free-standing sockets) in their oven and using that as a dehydrator. or heat-lamp bulbs. you could probably better this arrangement by putting a fan in there and maybe leaving the oven door open a crack for ventilation. i have a friend who actually puts a cheap electric space-heater (!!!) in his oven and uses it as a dehydrator. hes a long time raw foodist, and he said that when his dehydrator broke he didnt want to bother getting another one, so this is what he uses. ive also read about people putting racks over their radiators.. so there are ways to try this without having to get a dehydrator before youre sure you want to invest in one.

that said, some excalibur brand dehydrators come with a timer on them. i have an excalibur but not with the timer, but ive never worried about being home to turn it on or whatever. dehydrating times are usually not exact, and a little longer in the dehydrator doesnt usually make much of a difference, at least not in my experience. so i dont think you have to worry about sitting around and monitoring your dehydrator. theyre supposed to be safe to leave on when your not at home, and ive never heard of anyone having a safety hazard by doing this. with the excalibur, you dont need to rotate trays as much, though i have found the top ones closer to the fan and the backs of hte trays near the fan do dry quicker, and also the excalibur lets you take out trays so you can put in a bowl of soup or bigger dish or whatever. i dont think the nesco lets you do this but i dont know. the disadvantage to the excalibur is that its 2 or 3 times the price of a nesco, i think.

if you still want to eat quinoa, you can sprout it and eat it raw, but i dont find it very appealing; it requires alot of chewing. there are other grains though, such as raw buckwheat, that work well in raw recipes. but yeah, i feel you on the brown rice and quinoa thing. sometimes its just not possible to change our whole diet all at once. i think if you change everything else to raw and have to hold onto the cooked quinoa or rice in small amounts for a while, thats not that big a deal. those grains are gluten-free too so thats even better than if you were using wheat, etc. As a side note, i have found that raw, sprouted, HULLED (not PEARLED) barley is a pretty good substitute for rice, particularly in a warm raw soup sort of context. it has a similar sort of 'tooth-feel" as brown rice...(although its not gluten free..but thats not a big deal if youre not sensitive to gluten..)

anyway, good luck

kaybee

[Veganforlife]

VERY good post kaybee~!!!

[kaybee]

yep, no prob:) ive been trying to research other alternatives to commercial dehydrators because im gonna teach this raw foods class (if i get enough people) and dehydrators are going to be totally non-affordable to people here because they are SO pricey here.

hey vfl--btw--my "dulse" all turned into nori when i dehydrated it. go figure. i thought it was nori but the lady who showed me the foraging spot SWORE it was dulse...go figure. dulse doesnt turn black and crispy and taste like nori when dehydrated ;p its ok i still like nori..but i wonder where the dulse is...??

[Revvell]

Your food is dehydrating, not cooking. With an Excalibur you do NOT have to rotate the trays OR stay home OR get up early. You can get out, work, enjoy life and have food when you come home. How cool is that?



Thanks Julie,

Can anyone comment on this about rotating the trays while food is "cooking". Being home for 7 to 12 hours at a time are not usually an option for me Somedays I am working 10 hours day.

I am interested in buying one but dont want to invest if I had to sit in the house for 12 hours at a pop.

Thanks
Thomas

[Thomas3344]

Thanks Kaybee!

That was really, really helpful--- big time. It helped me with the expectations of a dehydrator and thanks about leaving a couple of cooked foods in my diet & it is not the biggest deal. I totally agree. I am about 50% to 60 percent raw at the moment and allowing my body and mind tell me IF and when to decrease the cooked foods.
Thanks again
That was awsome.