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Several Important Capabilities Of The Electric Food Dehydrator
Electric Food Dehydrators come in all kinds of shapes and sizes varying widely both in quality and price.
A compact, cheap food dehydrator that costs between $30 and $40 will have the heat source located at the bottom of the machine and it can take up to 3 days in order to dry certain types of foods.
This may be just fine for the occasional use and will be great for keeping your kids entertained for a few hours.
If on the other hand you are looking for a more substantive and reliable system to preserve foods either for snacks, camping out, backpacking or survival situations then you really must count on paying more for a better model.
My husband always says - "Buy the Best for the Least"
What you will be searching for is a dehydrator that provides fast, even and wholesome drying of food.
This is a list of the features and benefits that the higher priced, top of the range, electric food dehydrators offer you.
Top mounted fan which means that fluids do not drip down on to the heating chamber.
1000 watts of electrical power giving you a quicker drying time for large amounts of food.
Air flow system that forces heated air down the outside pressurized chamber, and then horizontally across each individual rack for fast, even and nutritious drying.
No flavor mixing.
Drying pressures adjusting automatically to the variable range of trays.
Opaque exterior that obstructs light to retain more of the foods nutrients and vitamins throughout the drying process.
Expanding to meet your needs. You might to begin with buy a four tray system and then find that you could make use of more drying space. With an expandable system it is simple to add more trays, say 20 trays giving you 20 square feet of drying space.
The question you need to ask yourself is, which of these features can I do without while still providing fast, even and nutritious food.
My personal short list of essentials for an electric food dehydrator would be as follows: top mounted fan, an opaque exterior, horizontal air-flow, expandable tray system, variable drying pressures and also I would prefer a reasonably fast drying system.
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