It's an Excaliber 9-tray model. Look at all this space!
I love that there's no hole in the middle of each tray.
I love that I can check the trays without unstacking and restacking the whole darn thing.
I don't love that it has a larger footprint than the Nesco dehydrator, but I do love that it's shorter than the Nesco 12-tray stack. There's a perfect spot on top of my washing machine where it can live permanently.
The capacity of the Excaliber is actually only half a square foot larger than the Nesco with all 12 trays stacked. However, when the Nesco is fully loaded, it takes FOREVER to dry, and I have to rotate the trays top to bottom multiple times to ensure that everything dries evenly. Plus, filling the square trays is so much easier than filling the round trays (no center hole!).
So here's the first couple batches out of the Excaliber:
This is...
- 5 pounds of shredded potatoes
- 2 pounds of dry raw black beans, soaked and cooked
- 1 pound of dry raw garbanzo beans, soaked and cooked
- 1 1/3 pounds of fresh carrots, shredded
- 2/3 pound of fresh carrots, sliced
- 1 bunch of celery, sliced
The reason I cooked the beans even though they were already dried and very store-able, was so I can use them in camping meals or quick soups. Now they just have to be rehydrated by adding boiling water, rather than cooking for an hour.
I currently have a gigantic 100-ounce jar of spaghetti sauce on 7 trays, merrily dehydrating away.
Oh, yes. I am indeed having fun.
5 comments:
How do you dehydrate spaghetti sauce??
Wishing I had one of these! Looks great!
you are on a roll. whee!! i have heard tell of this mythical amazing Excalibur dehydrator.
You are inspiring.
What do you do with the dehydrated shredded potato? Use it in cooking dishes (e.g. stews)? We have a bunch of potatoes just in from the garden that we will probably have trouble getting through.... Mostly we have just been dehydrating tomatoes, as the garden over produced this year, but I hope to get to some more fruit soon! I love the 'tomato chips' for snacks, though (or for dried tomato pesto)!
I've used them in several soups/stews, and last weekend I made hash browns. For soup, I just throw them in dry. For the hash browns, I rehydrated them with a 1:1 ratio of boiling water to potatoes for about 15 minutes then drain any excess water. You would never have known they were dehydrated. Do make sure to parboil the potatoes before dehydrating or they will turn black. Still edible but not appetizing.
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