New dehydrator

I recently bought a very cheap dehydrator as a bit of an experiment to see how much I would use it and also to help preserve foods in a fairly natural way.


My first experiment was two trays of bananas, two trays of apples and one tray of strawberries. Firstly, it took much longer than was indicated in the manual. In the end I probably overdid the apples, but they were still completely edible. I probably wouldn't bother with bananas or strawberries again. I'm not that much of a fan of banana chips and I'd probably prefer to make banana cake or muffins if I had bananas to use up. Or Banana Pikelets!

The dried strawberries were delicious on cereal, but again, I'd probably prefer them in a smoothie or cheesecake. It was a lot of effort (rotating trays, monitoring for correct dryness) for not a lot of gain.

I've done some research on better dehydrators and there are some out there that don't require trays to be rotated and have timers etc. I think if I find I want to use it some more, I may donate this dehydrator to charity and get a better one. I still have a number of experiments I need to complete before going down that path though.