In article ,
"Terry Coombs" wrote:

I bought a dehydrator to preserve veggies and meats . I'm wondering if
there's a way to keep the trays from getting nasty . I ask because I
borrowed one from my neighbor and the trays had a build up of "stuff" that
had been processed in the unit - mostly residue from making jerky . Cooking
spray ? Line the trays with screen or hardware cloth ? Cheesecloth ? Or did
he just not clean his properly after use ?
This unit has a fan plus the heater , Nesco model FD-37 400 watt .
Supposed to process a LOT faster than the straight convection units . I'm
going to try some tomatoes early next week , and probably some deer jerky
this weekend .

Soak/wash/rinse. They get nasty by default with anything that's "juicy"
- certainly with tomato juice I don't bother to wash them until the
season is over (or before the next thing, if the season has left me out
of energy.) Jerky juice I might feel a bit different about, but I have
not yet felt the need to make jerky, and it's old enough that all the
white plastic has yellowed... ;-) I'm not going to pick it up and find
the model number, but it's the old model with white, round trays that
came with 4 and can be expanded to 12 - and has been. Got some of the
"removable center" trays and it gets some use in the off-season as a
yogurt maker.

I don't think I'd add cooking spray to the process. I certainly don't,
and everything comes off with a soak & wash. Beware that they get
brittle with age, so scrub gently if you need to scrub, or just soak
more.

Have doe up two batches of yellow transparent apples in the past few
weeks - they improve with drying, though the peeling and slicing can be
interesting (things go to over-ripe in a heartbeat, and lose structural
integrity when they do.) No way to use the peeler-corer-slicer with them
(few would be hard enough) - OTOH, sliced thicker than it does and left
long enough to dry, one gets more apples dried at one batch that way
than on ones that can go though it.

--
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