What about the Alton Brown method?
Excalibur® COM2 42-Tray Commercial Dehydrator in Stainless SteelI'm in the market for a food dehydrator, tired of not being able to find jerky that isn't 40% sugar. Any recommendations?
Just made 4lbs with a 10yr old version of thisI'm in the market for a food dehydrator, tired of not being able to find jerky that isn't 40% sugar. Any recommendations?
I saw a salmon jerky recipe today. Do want.
Yeah I actually bought a box fan but never went through with it. No place in the house anymore to just leave a box fan running for days on end.
The alton Brown dehydrator box is just silly, a box fan is already going to be 1/3 or 1/2 the price of the basic food dehydrator i linked, and it's only going to be room temp air, which is fine, but it's not even remotely feasable, afterwards.
what are you going to do? throw away those 5$ filters? and store the fan back in your dank garage?
At least with the nesco tower, it's all compact and the size of a regular crockpot, not difficult to find basic kitchen storage.
you want to variable control the temp at least, i know it's a lot easier for me to do fruits with higher temp.You are absolutely correct in nearly all of that. However you say "only going to be room temp air" like that's a bad thing.
It's not.
True, real, historic jerky (and most of the other dried items was wind cured, aka, air dehydrated). You need salt or other surface modifiers (salinity, PH, UV, low temp, etc) to keep the surface unappealing to dangerous bacteria for just long enough for the moisture to leave; which then inhibits bacterial growth THAT way.
Heat dehydrators partially cook the jerky (or whatever) along with keeping things above the danger zone of growth; and that's fine. However, the output of the process, in a very real sense, is a very different product. Both are usually delish in their own ways.
Air Dried Meats and Sausages
Make Jerky with COLD air? What kinda crazy voodoo is this!! - Survivalist Forum
I imagine that you could strap the plates from a dehydrator on the box fan instead of air filters if you don't want the heat but also don't want to spend $20 on single use air filters.