Seems to me I recently read something where someone was talking about this but couldn't find the the thread or post, and now dh wants to get one.

The one we're interested in is the Nesco American Harvest FD-1020 Gardenmaster 1000-Watt Digital Food Dehydrator. Because you can have up to 30 trays and it came with 8 trays to begin with (vs less with others) this looks good to us. Reading about how to buy one it was suggested to look for one with a side or bottom mount motor, and the one we're considering has a top mount motor. Top mounts are sposed to eliminate probs w/moisture/juice dripping down, according to the sales schpiel.

Anyone know how true this is, is that really a prob with side or bottom mounts?

If anyone has used a food dehydrator, plmk what brand and what you think of it.

I've been freezing stockpiled items and garden stuff as well as doing canning. But we have very little storage space here, only have room for our one stand up freezer (which is almost always crammed fully) as well as the small freezer on top of fridge, and we could fit a lot more dehydrated foods into the space that we have vs. canning, freezing, and the stuff we get on sale already in cans/jars/bags/boxes/etc.

We have some purchased dehydrated foods we store for emergencies (lots of different bad weather conditions occur here), but they are expensive to buy, and hard to find organic stuff.
TIA,
MZ

Hello! I have a Nesco - in fact it is going right now with fruit leathers. That is what I primarily make, along with jerky and dried pineapple. I love it! I use it at least twice weekly. I have four trays going right now.

Is your motor on the top, side, or bottom? What model do you have? How easy/hard is it to clean?
The model we're looking at is supposed to dry stuff in hours vs. days - do you find that to be true?
Is your machine very noisy? What kind of jerky do you make and how long does it take? DH and the kids would love that for camping, hadn't really thought much about making it before.
I want to use it to mainly dry various fruits from the garden and stuff we find on sale as well as things like garden that I can later use for soups and stews.
MZ

My motor is on the top and it sounds like an air conditioner. Pretty easy to clean - we just let it soak for a few hours.

My pineapple takes about 12 hours. My fruit leathers take about 8 hours. Jerky takes about 4 hours. I go to allrecipes and find one - I think it is called sweet and smokey.

Have no idea the model - it was about $60 on Amazon. HTH!

I have an Excalibur dehydrator and I love it. It's the 9-tray one model #3900. Here's a link so you can see what I'm talking about: 9-Tray Large-Excalibur #3900 - Commercial Food & Fruit Dehydrator from Excalibur

I've read that Excalibur is the top of the line (but, of course, it depends on who you're talking to, I would guess). Mine has 15 square feet of drying space on those 9 trays as opposed to the 9 square feet you have on the American Harvest. On the other hand, I can't expand that. However, I find those 9 trays are usually more than enough room for me. I mostly use it for drying herbs from the garden and those 9 trays hold a lot of parsley or basil, etc. About enough to fill a quart sized canning jar. I'll just do a load of parsley one day, a load of basil the next, a load of sage the next, etc. I used it for drying apple slices this fall and I think the 9 trays yielded about 4 quart jars of dried apples. Most of the time I don't use all of the trays because I just don't have enough to fill them. We don't grow fruit so what I dry (other than the apples that came from my b-i-l) I buy and it's pretty hard to find good deals on fruit. I still freeze or can the majority of my veggies from the garden, but I often think (as I'm throwing out that soggy celery) that I really need to start drying things like celery and carrots for soups. I have dried onions when I've found a good sale and then ground them up in the food processor creating onion powder and onion flakes. I'd suggest doing that in your garage or outside if possible. Your house will smell like onions for weeks! Same thing with hot peppers. I dry cayennes and some others that we grow to make into powders. Do it outside!!!!!

My motor is on the back of the unit. I don't see how having it on the top would affect the amount of juice dripping down. Actually, I don't know why you'd ever have juice dripping down. I did see that the American Harvester has more wattage than mine, but I've never had anything dripping. The whole idea of drying is to dry it slowly so it dries evenly. Not to cook it so that it's dripping out its juice. I would think that having it on the top would dry the top trays way before it would dry the bottom trays.

Have you looked at the yahoo food preserving group? There's lots and lots of info there. Just go to Yahoo! Groups - Join or create groups, clubs, forums & communities and then look for preserving-food.

Good luck. Now I think I'm going to have to slice up that celery that's sitting in the back of the fridge and maybe those carrots and dry them tomorrow!

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Linda

Thanks for the great info. I *do* want to use it to dry my garden herbs as well as garlic and onion to make into powders. We grow strawberries, raspberries, currants, & plums, can't wait to see how they turn out when dried. Things like beans, peas, peppers, etc - those are the things I'd like to dry to make my own soup mixes with.Potatoes are one of my fam's fav starches, have gotten so expensive at stores, so we grow em but don't have room to store em properly. I want to slice and dry em. I hate all the additives in packaged foods but want the convenience, am hoping doing this will give me that bennie. Hadn't thought about fruit leathers, but will hafta try that, am sure kids will love it. Have signed up for the yahoo group, thanks for the heads up on that one.
MZ

Go to the files in the yahoo group. All kinds of info in there including tons of recipes!

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Linda

And be sure to check out the photos: Charlie's album. He's the food drying guru!!!

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Linda

I have one with the motor on top also. I make lots of jerky at our house. I bought it at Walmart. The only thing I don't like is the trays are a pain to clean.

Wow, that yahoo group is a treasure trove of info, thanks! Can't wait for the machine to come and start trying stuff out.
MZ