Does anyone have a food dehydrator? If so, do you like it? What are you favorite things to dry?

I use my oven set on 180 degrees, overnight. I love apples, pineapple, peaches, oranges, plums, grapes, I guess mostly fruit. I've done tomatoes, zucchini, cukes, etc...but for me the fruits come out the best. I just can't afford the space for another appliance on my little cupboard.

Sorry. The book with the cookie recipe in it is packed away somewhere in the storage room so we don't have any measurements.

It is finely chopped apples (any kind you like)
Maple syrup
Flax seeds (either whole or ground into meal)

Mix together, make into cookie shapes and dehydrate for 24 hours. Dd think the temp was 115.

Do not try to grind flax seed in your blender or food processor. They are too tiny. Dd uses a coffee grinder and even that doesn't do a really good job of it.

If you get "cookbooks" for raw food it has recipes that use the dehydrator.

I use my oven as a dehydrator. Generally I do oven dried tomatoes when they come in buckets late in the summer. I love the flavor punch of dries tomatos.

I can't wait to see the recipe for flaxseed cookies! Thanks for posting. Are there dehydrator cookbooks? Someone just gave me one and I thought I'd come to the expertss to see what you like and don't like about them and what your favorite things are to "cook".

Dd has one and uses it to make some really good flaxseed "cookies" but it is in storage right now with a lot of our other stuff that we have no room for here at my parent's house.

I will have her post her recipe this weekend while she is at home.

ps: I also use to make fruit leather...soooo much better than anything you buy. just open a jar of jam, spread it on the insert...and let'r rip. yummmmmmmm......

yes yes yes!!!!! I have a Nesco. I dry pears mostly. DS favorite. I have also dried peas...and many other fruits and veggies...kiwi, berries, corn (which shrink a ton..I know now why they are so expensive when you buy.) I bought it because I don't like the sulfites and stuff in the purchased dried foods. I will say they DON'T look the same- and don't taste the same...they are better. I have never 'soaked' it in sugar water as sometimes recommended. I have yet to make jerky. The directions say to use the sulfites when making the jerky although i have a friend that makes it just fine w/o. I have tasted incredible deer jerky.....not my own.

I have one and love it, though I don't use it as often as I could. (But it does get used enough to warrant permanent shelving space in the basement.)

Mostly I use it to dry cilantro and other fresh herbs, because I never use all of it at one time. But I have used it to apricots, blueberries, figs, tomatoes, and other stuff, too.