Tips for building your own food dehydrator.
You don’t have to be handy to be a patriot or survivalist, but sometimes it sure helps. A case in point is dehydrating food. While you can purchase a food dehydrator, but many of them don’t stand up to years of use, others can’t handle large quantities of food and others are very expensive. You’ll have more money for the food to dehydrate if you learn how to build one for yourself!
As you probably know, dehydration is the best way to keep food for long periods of time without spoiling. Moisture in food is what eventually breeds bacteria, so the more water that can be removed, the longer your food items can keep. Plus, you can store food much more compactly after it’s been dried. Apples in a 2½-gallon bucket, for example, can fit in a one-gallon freezer bag after they’ve been sliced and dried.
While dehydrating food has become more popular in recent years, it’s really a very old strategy. For centuries, people dried out their extra meat, fish, fruit and vegetables during warmer months in order to store it for colder months. They did this under a hot sun, but today we have the luxury of being able to dry our food indoors in dehydrators.
I found an article in Backwoods Home Magazine, “Build This Sturdy Large-Capacity Food Dehydrator.” I think it’s pretty easy to follow.
I really enjoyed the practical advice presented in this article, including what type of trays do not work well for a dehydrator, how you should get your trays first and then build the cabinet to fit around them, as well as making your fan large enough to move air slowly through the dryer but small enough so that it doesn’t cool the food on the trays. There are also tips for drying specific foods such as apples, and provides four sources for more information.
Have you ever used a store-bought food dehydrator? If so, were you happy with its performance? How about you DIYers? Have you tried building your own dehydrator? Tell me about your experiences, including what you wish you would have done differently. I love learning from like-minded folks out there!
Hey, thank you for this article.
Food dehydrators are a blessing.
If you are able to dry your food properly, all the taste will remain in the food. This is why it is important to have a procedure before you start and follow it religiously.
You may think that if you start dehydrating food, you will lose the taste. What really happens is that the taste becomes more concentrated. Consequently, when you dehydrate food, you are removing the water and preserving the flavor.
Some interesting ideas and I do not wish to sound like an awful snob but we have a convection oven. Has anyone dried fruits in one? Any secrets?
I read about someone putting their tomato slices on cookie trays & leaving in the back window of their car all day while at work to make sun dried tomatoes. Makes sense to me & costs nothing.
It is Much less expensive to buy commercially dried fruit and vegetables from suppliers who buy their fruit and vegetables wholesale in bulk than to dry your own purchased at the local retail grocery store.
If you start drying fruit and vegetables you will soon see where already overpriced fruit and vegetables quickly turn in one eighth as much dried fruits and vegetables !! Seriously !!
There is a solar dehydrator project I have been thinking about building for some time but haven’t got around to it.
The heating element is simply an upside-down clear polycarbonate tray built over a black painted metal ramp that gets very very hot in direct sun. Air gets sucked in at the bottom of the tray as it heats up and rises to the top of the ramp. Then it sinks as it collects moisture in the food trays. A hot black stove-pipe chimney then “sucks” the heavy air out from below the bottom dehydrator tray.
Simple as that.
The system must be air-tight to work properly;
but would be far cheaper than the power-hungry store-bought 110-Volt units.
Joe G.
Anybod out there used a barbeque to dehydrate?y
I converted an old style, all metal, refrigerator that I bought at a local auction. It already had chrome metal wire shelves in it. I made an opening in the top back and put screen on the inside and a sliding gate on the out side to control the air flow.
I built a ramp out of 2×4’s and plywood the width of the inside dimension of the refrigerator. I raised the refrigerator up, using some concrete blocks that I had and attached the ramp at about a 40 degree angle to the bottom hole that I made in the refrigerator for that purpose. I closed the bottom of the ramp with a 2×4 that had several 2″ dia. holes drilled in it. I covered the holes with screen. I then painted the inside of the ramp with flat black paint and covered the top of the ramp with Plexiglas, using clear caulk and some brass screws. I also added a dial thermometer off and old smoker that I had. I live in Southern Idaho and we get a lot of sun in the summer months. I set the unit in a south-westerly direction to take advantage of the hottest parts of the day. I works great, it cost nothing to use, and all I have to do is fill it up and forget it.
CAUTION!, these old style refrigerator’s have locking doors. I put a pad lock on mine as a safety precaution to prevent a child from accidentally locking them selves in it. Some states have strict laws about these old refrigerators so check your local codes.
JC
About 40 years I made food dehydrators for my family members, and they are still being used. It contains 7 shelves that consist of small window screens with plastic screening material to hold the food. The case is plywood, with a lucite door that allows heated air to escape from the edges. A screw-in heater element provides the heat, and two mini-fans circulate the air, with the fans drawing air through holes in the plywood, and a thermostat controls the heat. It is 16″ wide, 18″ tall, and 27″ deep. I use it for bananas, apples, tomatoes, and squash, but anything will work.
I made a big food dehydrator. At Lowes they sell wide linen shelving 12 feet long. its 20 inches wide and they cut it into 7 20 inch pieces free of charge. One shelf cost about $38.00 as I best remember. I wind up with 7 shelves. Each one has the inch and a half bent around lip that both reinforces it and give an inch and a half rise on one end. Alternate them as one sits on top of the other then you have an automatic inch and half space between each layer of food as it is drying. I have stacked these as high as 28 shelves high. I was drying bread into bread crumbs. In Muncie indiana the bread thrift store sells day old bread for $7.00 for a 10 rack stack. You MUST sign that it is for animal feed. You get about 100 loafs for $7.00. It stores forever and has more uses than youll ever dream. Keep it dry in jars or plastic bags. In any thing stored if you worry about microscopic vermin just place a single bay leaf in each container. Bay leaves give off a miniscule amount of CYANIDE. No worry, it can never hurt you but the itsy bitsy little pests cant stand it.
Anyhow back to the dehydrator. All heat I ever used is a little ceramic heater (about $5 or less in thrift shops) This little heater is on almost 24 hours per day and it’ll run up your electric bill about $74.00 in a month. A nice thing is that the heater fits exactly in one of the plastic bread carriers and the metal wire shelves also with their 20 by 20 dimensions fit exactly on top of the bread tray. so there is nothing to construct. I throw a blanket over the entire thing and let it go. Leave a little opening around the first 4 inches or so. In about a month you can do about a years worth of food. Good Luck. Phil
I have tried many dehydrating methods and machines over the years. The best I’ve found is the Excalibur. It’s expensive but well worth it. The air cross flow , adjustable thermostat.timer, and large trays are excellent and durable. You can remove trays to dry bowls of soup to make your own dried soup mixes. Yes, you need power to run it. But it’s fast and low maintenance. I’ve had mine for about 20 years now.
I too love my Excalabur. I got my 1st one at age 14. At 49, just upgaded from the old 4 shelf unit to a 9 shelf unit. I also bought a clear door for it so I can see the progres w/o losing heat. My apples dried in less than 2 hours.
I have a dehydrater from Monkey Wards that I’ve had for almost 50 yrs. It’s still chugging away & I see no reason to abandon it. On our farm, we did tons of “fruit leather”, fruits & jerky of different meats. Without it in front of me, I recall it has about 7-8 trays. After I set it, all I’d do is change the trays, top – bottom, bottom – top, & the same with the middle ones. I’m much more
glad I have it now since the nation is heading down the toilet.
Haha. Monkey Wards. Thanks for that. I haven’t heard that name since my Daddy died. Thanks for a nice memory :)
I’m like the other man…lol, not heard “Monkey-Wards” in Forever but we bought an old 16 truck w/ a liftgate on it when they closed in our town. The front cab flipped to the Front w/ glass down towards the street. We had a lot of Antiques we auctioned so I drove her. We NEED those old American Stores instead of the “Throw Away Society Goods” that we’ve imported, thanks to our Congress over the years! Now we’ve lost all our cars & most Industry but they are trying to kill the rest & keep any new out w/ regulations to do it! Amazing how well we used to build stuff & we’ve got to fight to get that back! Thanks
for taking me back to good years & I’m only 52!! peace
Yep, I’m 52 now and so sick of this high tech society that I am going back to the old ways as much as I can….my goal is to go back to how it was during my grand father’s day…totally self sufficient….the hardest thing will be doing away with the internet; I’ve already given up all other electronic gadgets including TV….I’ve always had a feeling when everything is interconnected that is the end of society because take one system down and the rest follow….