Dehydrating food. Raw vegans?

First off I'm not a vegan. We do own a couple of dehydrators though. Frankly oven drying sucks compared to them and if you have an electric oven to begin with then there is no pilot light.

Most good dehydrators will come equipped with a fan. A dehydrator is more than just heat if you don't want it to take days. I can dehydrate canned corn in about 7 hours. Onions in about the same time. Sweet potatoes go longer at around 14 hours. Try dehydrating sweet potatoes in your oven some time with a pilot light. It should only take a week or so and they will probably develop mold before they are dry.

You don't have to spend $300 on a dehydrator. A mid range Nesco will run you around $60 to $75. The better Nescos will run you around $100 + but will allow you up to 30 drying trays at once. You'd better have a seriously large garden to buy that one.

Dehydrating also saves a considerable amount of space. We can fit eight cans of corn in a single quart jar once dehydrated. Four cans of spaghetti sauce in a pint jar. Eight large sweet potatoes in a quart jar.

Many things we dehydrate and then grind into a powder. A vacuum sealer with a jar lid attachment sucks all the air out and stuff can be stored for years this way if needed.

The vast majority of people who buy a dehydrator use it once or twice and stick it in the closet and forget about it. If you aren't serious about using one then don't waste your money. Usually these people make the mistake of buying a model with no fan and it ends up taking two to three days to dry anything. You will always feel like you are going backwards with these cheapo models. Ronco is one that has no fan, just a heating element in the bottom.

You can find many different makes and models on eBay and Amazon. You will probably get a slightly better price off eBay. Just stay away from the models with no fan.

I eat raw and to be perfectly honest here- all those sites featuring food dehydrators and drying times and racks inside the dehydrator make me want to run for the hills and never come down. They look SO boring and fussy just to get your food.

And what food are we talking about?

HEre's a good tip, if for instance you want to get dried fruit- and it makes a really good present at Xmas, to give people your own home made dried fruit with all kinds of seeds and nuts too- then you just put the sliced fruit in an oven with the pilot light on. Overnight, or a two day period, you can forget about it- the oven is fixed to have the pilot light on anyway.

All food dehydrators do is get the temperature at about the lowest heat- say, that of a very warm dry day, and lets the water evaporate quicker than it would if you let it sit on the table. And because the heat is dry, it takes the water out quickly, and doesn't obviously let the food spoil and rot, the same as if you did let it sit on the table top.

So, bottom line- if you really want to spend a lot of money and stupid effort cleaning that stupid thing then buy it. I really don't see the point and never have. The only dried food I would eat is dried fruit and you can make that yourself, dried veg too.

Dried seaweed I buy ready dried from the shop- they sell it all over the place in Japan so it's never hard to get. If you live near a china town, they sell dried veg and seaweeds anyway which haven't been cooked.

You will end up with a piece of annoying equipment you don't need to use.

I don't dehydrate much. I DO pulverize nuts and lentils to make flour, cashews to make cream, almonds ditto, and blending stuff is a wonderful thing- raw cocoa and dates and avocado to make chocolate mousse etc.

120 Raw Diet Food Recipes : http://go.stayeatingraw.com/?UvbA