Food Dehydrators

[farfallina]

Hi everyone,

I've been searching dehydrators recently and I need your help as always
I don't have anyone around who owns one
I never saw any dehydrator on action as well.
I'd much appreciate your opinions and comments.

I saw there was another topic here in forum on Excalibur and read it.
Well.. it is quite out of my price range and I wouldn't need such a big capacity either
We are only two, we don't cultivate much food (We have a very very small garden. Today I planted my first 4 tomato plants for the first time in my life! It will be the first time that I am cultivating something except herbs in the flowerpots! I am so curious to see how they are gonna turn out! I plan to plant a few more plants up to my gardens size. Anyway.. Let me go back to dehydrators)

I saw some cheaper brands and models.
Has any of you ever used or heard about any of these brands and models?:

BIELMEIER Food Dehydrator BHG 601

Rommelsbacher DA 750

SEVERIN OD 2940

Bomann DR 435

Clatronic DR2751

What are the things you can dehydrate?
Tomatoes, mushrooms, plums, apricots...?

Thanks in advance...

[fundj&e]

 farfallina have you seen this thread

http://www.forumthermomix.com/index.php?topic=6870.0

[gertbysea]

Farfallina  if you are not sure about  your use of a dehydrator just use your oven to see if you need one.  Same principal. You can dry most things overnight. Single layers. About 60  degrees. Walk away.

If you are happy and find you are using your dehydrated foods then go ahead and buy one. Otherwise you already own one.

Gert.

[Cuilidh]

Good advice, Gert.

[stacelee]

I have a centuries (okay about 20 years) old Harvestmaid dehydrator that I use to dry pretty much anything that takes my fancy.  It has just finished drying some seedless red grapes and I put some zucchinis on to dry before I left home this morning.  If you are looking at getting one, I would strongly suggest one that has an adjustable temperature so that you can dry everything from delicate herbs to beef jerky.  Its also really handy to have a vacuum sealer so that you can portion up whatever you have dried for longer term storage (although when doing beef jerky you need to be careful not to pierce the bag).

I have actually just bought four new trays/screens/leather mats for mine from Amazon to make it up to 8 trays.  I can't keep up with the dried apple for my family.  I gave up trying to buy them here in Australia as the only place I could find them was online and was going to cost $60 more than Amazon (even with the shipping from the states).

I have scanned in a copy of the instruction manual for my machine if you would like a copy to see what can be dried and how to do it.

Stacey

[Slice of Health]

I got given one but gave it away, I found it took too long to dry things (juicy things like mango which was mainly what I wanted it for) and the unit took a lot of room and was quite noisy. I occasionally dry herbs in the microwave now and just buy dried fruit as I need it. If I had heaps of storage space I may have kept it for occasional use as its pretty cool to create unusual dried foods like vegies and some of the rare type of fruits.  I haven't missed it though...

[AliRo]

I have the sunbeam one and find it good for my purposes.  I mostly just use it to make fruit roll ups, and DH uses it for when he goes hiking and dehydrates vegies and protein to put in with pasta.  It is quite noisy though but I find I get used to the whir of it.  Like someone else said, it is bulky, but I have sufficient storage space for it so I don't mind.

[farfallina]

Thank you all 
You really are helpful..

@fundj, yes i read that one but they mostly talk about very big and expensive models which I am not very interested in

@Gert & Cuilidh, it definitely is a great idea! I will try it. Did you every do that? Should I use fan? Maybe I can google some recipes on drying in the oven.
I didn't understand one thing though, if oven is capable of doing the same thing why a food dehydrator is needed then? Because of the long drying hours?

@stacelee, i will check if they have adjustable temperature. If I decide to get one I could surely use your instruction manual to be informed of drying methods, I let you know, thank you for your offer

@Kulsha & AliRo, you made me notice something extremely important for us which is noise! We live in an apartment building and we have a contract of electricity which makes it cheaper to use between 7pm-8am but more expensive in the morning hours. So if I got a food dehydrator, I would prefer to use it during night hours but these are also the hours that everyone in the building is sleeping, if it is really that noisy we can kiss it goodbye. Upon your posts I checked a video on youtube. OMG! is it really this noisy??

[Slice of Health]

That noise is probably accentuated by the video microphone and it sounds like a vacuum cleaner - so the model I had was not that bad... but I found it noisy enough to actually set up outside on the balcony instead of in the kitchen/lounge (it was just annoying rather than deafening).

[farfallina]

It is good to hear that yours was not that noisy Kulsha
Nevertheless if you couldn't stand its noise in the kitchen it might not be the right noise level for us anyway to make it work during night hours

I found this link on dehydrators, people who are considering to buy a dehydrator might be interested.

[AliRo]

I would say it's more of an annoying sound rather than a sound that would make you want to turn the tv up or talk louder etc.  We have a very small house which the noise travels through very easily.  My daughter's bedroom is right off the kitchen.  It doesn't seem to worry her, and we go off to sleep to the sound of a hum which eventually dies away.