Excalibur Food Dehydrator-4 tray

Preserve your seasonal garden glut by gently drying it with this fantastic food dehydrator. At BakeryBits we have experience of using these ourselves and can highly recommend them. We have used one to dry home grown plums, apples and tomatoes amongst others - dried garden cherry tomatoes are unbelievably tasty. Other fruits such as mango is very successful making a tasty snack or baking ingredient.

The dehydrator comes in a variety of sizes from 4 or 9 trays (the 4 tray version is often seen on BBC Professional Masterchef) onto which the food is placed for drying (as a rough guide, 2 sliced mangoes fill one tray, so 9 tray represents a lot of food to be dried). It can also be used for other processes too including herbs, proving (covered) bread, yoghurt making, vegetables, fruit, fruit rolls, meat and fish.

Once the food has been placed on the trays, the door is hung in position and then the temperature is set according to the food being dried (an instruction booklet is provided for this). Models with a timer have the time set and then the machine is turned on. We find that the timer is very useful to allow for drying overnight without over doing it.