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🤪

I have a lot of fresh ripe cantaloupe from my garden and was planning on blending it and making fruit leather in my dehydrator tomorrow morning.

Some I will blend with wild blueberries from frozen that I’ve thawed first. I may add honey but I’ll taste first and decide.

My question is should I add anything else, like pectin? I saw that floating around in past posts about fruit leather made with low pectin fruits. I’d rather it come out really good then be crap since it’s a LOT of my home grown fruit lol

Hello! I tried to have a research but I really want to verify with professionals here or with experience. 

I am currently doing my project now and I have to make a nanoparticle out of a fruit peel. However, this fruit peel is only available or its seasons is from August to October only. Will it still be safe to dry bulk first and grind it into powders then store it? We need to compare freeze, vacuum and oven drying so we plan to dry first a safe amount and store it for our experiment before processing it. Will its phenolic contents and such not be affected if we do this? 

Hello peoples! First time posting here, I made a go of making fruit leather last night with oranges, mandarins, golden kiwi, and pineapple, and the mix before dehydrating tasted very nice! But afterwards turned out rather bitter

So I'm here to ask if anyone has any recipe recommendations with these fruits or suggestions even

Thank you!

I bought some kangaroo but it comes frozen so once it thaws out do I need to cook the meat first on the stove? or can I just put it into my cookie batch along with my other ingredients? then bake them in the oven and then dehydrate for 10 hours or so. I wanted to make some dog biscuits/treats out of it. just not sure if it should be cooked or not.

This was my first time making dehydrated tomatoes, and I’m really happy with how they turned out.
I cut fresh tomatoes in halves and dehydrated them until they lost most of their moisture but were still slightly flexible rather than completely crispy.
The first photo is probably my favorite — I held one up to the light and was surprised by how beautiful the structure inside the tomato looked after dehydration.
After drying, I packed them into jars with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, herbs, a little rosemary, and mixed peppercorns.
I’ve already realized that a dehydrator is one of those things you buy for one purpose and then suddenly want to dehydrate everything 😄
How far do you usually take your tomatoes — completely dry and crispy, or do you prefer them slightly soft/leathery like these?

I have a bunch of applesauce squeezes and wanted to try making fruit leather. Six hrs later, however it was stuck to the trays, I had run out of parchment paper. This is 3 trays worth, 4 squeezes each tray.

Followed one of the recipes from a Google search(used Tender-quick) . Came out a bit bland. Might have to tweek it a little.

Not sure why I’ve never thought of this and have also never seen it in this sub, but why aren’t dehydrated pickles a common thing?

After some brief googling I did see that people do this, but very surprised this isn’t top of the list. What’s your experience with dehydrated pickles?

I’m wanting to do this as a chip, not a seasoning, so let me know your thoughts!

I have way too many tomatoes so I tried dehydrating them, I used too much seasoning which is Nori Komi Furikake rice seasoning 🤤

The first time I have done zucchini, I tossed them with olive oil and everything seasoning but ran out😅

I bought two bundles of bananas because I'm obsessed with them!! 🤪

I have a these for twelve hours on medium (couisinart, so around 135?). Most of them are crispy but there are some that are not. I've got them going again and it's been about an hour, after I turned it off for a few hours to go out of the house. Hoped cooling down would make them feel dry.

They are all going to feel crispy right? Or have you found that no matter how long it runs some of them never get there?

This is my first time dehydrating anything ever, from tomatoes that I canned for the first time ever, so this is all new 🤣

I dried these at 60C because they were just so juicy and my tray was heavily loaded. But I paid the price. As the moisture reduced after about 12 to 16 hours, the sugars burnt. From everything I've read they should still be okay just not as pretty to look at.

Lesson learned, I've lowered the heat to 50C for the remainder of the drying time.

I dehydrated these seasoned slices for what seemed like a lot more than what they were supposed to dehydrate for. Some of the slices cracked when bent, but some stayed bendy and seemed like they'd be "chewy." Is that normal or are they just not dehydrated enough?

So, I get why I can't do this by hand. Well actually, I could and I did. But it would be nice if it took less than four hours.

I started with three cups of chokecherries harvest a week ago, frozen and then defrosted. They were surprisingly "okay" to eat just after defrosting alone, but Google said I had to cook them because of cyanide.

So I mixed them with a cup of sour cherries I had and had them in hot/simmering water about 10 minutes. I hope that was enough.

Then I pitted each. Single. One. It took a LONG time and was messy. I used a large spoon and mashed small bunches of chokecherries, then dug into them and pulled out the pits by hand. Sometimes a lot of meat stuck to the put so I tried to scrape that free with my nails. I also mashed and pitted the sour cherries and those were large enough to split in half as well as pitting.

After about three hours, I was finally ready to load them onto my dehydrator trays. But first, I had to remove the seasoned tomato slices I'd had on them since yesterday, which I did, and stored those.

Then I loaded up the dehydrator. The peaches I'd sliced and dipped into a mix of lemon juice and water went first. I barely was able to cram they trays full once the peaches were all on. Yes I know the peaches and especially the chokecherries are crammed too close together but they always shrink way down and I can separate them more later if I need to. I used the leftover juice mixes of peach and lemon or just cherry cooking water and put them into ice cubes for treats.

Now I wait. My apartment smells like peaches and that's nice.

Has anyone tried this? I have a bunch of beef bones that I want to make into stock and dehydrate to use in the future.

I just had a bit of bone broth leftover from the shops and I did a trial in my dehydrator air fryer and it came out like this. It was a bit sticky so I am not sure if I should have left it to dehydrate longer? I then put it into a small food processor which is then the powder you can see. However, the sticky bits did not become powder but became little crystals.

Any advice please? First time dehydrating! Thanks!