I bought silica packs on amazon a few weeks ago to use for my spice containers. Earlier today I saw someone talk about food-grade silica packs, and now Im worried if I bought non food grade ones. I can't find my order anymore to double check, does anyone know if I ruined my spices with something potentially risky to my health? Can/should I remove them or maybe they are safe after all? The tiny packs don't have any info on them other than the typical "SILICA GEL, do not eat, throw away, DESICCANT"

Hello, I'm looking to make some dehydrated dog treats using ground turkey, sweet potato and raw oats. I bought a bag of steel cut oats that I was thinking i'd grind down into oat flour to add to my mixture, but it occurred to me that raw oats might not be good for dogs. Does anyone have experience with this? Do I need to cook the oats first before I add them to my mixture? It feels kinda counter productive to add water to oats only to take it away again through dehydration, but also want to make sure I'm not missing anything health wise that might happen during the cooking part. Thanks!

EDIT: thank you all!! My goal is to give my boy some really good, easy to digest, home-cooked treats so I will cook these oats before I add them into the meat mixture to break down those starches. Thanks for input!

Is there a way to sweeten very tart Granny Smith apples? I used citric acid to prevent browning, but they still came out very tart. Can I add corn syrup or honey or sugar to the citric acid water? Or do I need to do a separate dip before dehydrating. I hear that sugar can crystallize which is why I asked about corn syrup, or maybey honey.

I just got dehydrator from Costco! I love it!

ATM i am dehydrating strawberries and apples. I just picked scorpion, Carolina reapers, habaneros, and cayenne peppers.

Can I put the hot peppers in with the fruit? Or would the fruit absorb the flavor of the peppers?

I saw online that you can add a mixture of sugar and citric acid to dehydrated fruit to make it into sour candy but sadly can't find the post anymore. has anyone done this and have any guidance/tips/tricks? I'm thinking of doing it with dehydrated pineapple or orange segments

Been drying things for a while, and I'm wondering if anyone has any pointers on making "dried apple" a la what you buy in supermarkets in Australia.

We've done apple, and we get what is clearly described on here and in the search results: leathery/crispy/should snap chips. Which are great! I make a delicious toffee apple thing by drizzling them with hard-crack sugar melt. But I don't want "apple jerky" or "apple chips".

When you buy supermarket "dried apple" here, it's a soft, chewy "plump" ring. Anyone got any ideas on how to head that direction? They're not juicy, they're stored dry and have many months of expiration date.

The ingredients on our main supermarket one are Preservative 223, Sulphur dioxide, citric acid. The only one that seems pertinent is the citric acid, but both lemon/lime/crystal citric acid don't seem to "do" anything to our experiments.

So I'm putting it here: How can I make these soft and chewy ones?

I need some instructions about using the dehydrator to make crispy fries. I think dehydrating them before baking them is the trick, but would love some specifics. I just tried 30 minutes at 140 degrees, then baked them at 400 for 20 minutes. They came out ok, but not crisp.

Any tips on slicing a good, big piece of meat? I am thinking about a top round, and a bottom round, the last batch was too thick (I ate it all) and I would like to have slimmer slices, any tips appreciated.

If I’m using the dehydrating setting on my oven, does that mean I don’t have to keep the door propped open? I’m not sure how it differs from just having the oven on a low temp

I'm just curious is soy sauce necessary for liquid marinade? I made some really good honey pepper garlic jerkey (I prefer sweet) and it called for 10 tbs of soy sauce which I cut back to 8. It's still "greasy" even though it's brittle.

Could I do the marinade and just skip the soy sauce altogether?

Also if I were to make pemmican with this recipe would it still be shelf stable?

So, this might be an odd one. That said, I’m going to guess someone here might be able to steer me in the right direction.

My mother in law used to get this bell pepper salsa seasoning that we all love. Not long ago, we ran out and have not been able to find it anywhere.

My question, I guess, is what do y’all think is a better option here - buying bell pepper salsa and dehydrating it, or buying the ingredients and making it myself?

I bought a pre-owned commercial dehydrator and I love it! So far I have been slicing by hand (apples, veggies, berries). I need to invest in a slicer but there are so many online and I don't know what I'm searching for.

Since I plan on a lot of dehydrating, I want a good one (I'll buy pre-owned, if necessary). Hoping I can find a great one for around (or less than) $200-ish?

Suggestions?

Recently picked up a FD 40 snackmaster dehydrator and can't find any info about it online at all. Does anyone have the manual/cleaning instructions, etc?

I just bought my first dehydrator. It has a heating element on the back top side and right side and a fan in the middle.

Although they are claiming an even distribution of heat throughout the interior, the bottom and especially the bottom left side is colder than the rest of the zones. I haven't tried actually dehydrating fruit yet, was just testing for now.

Is it similar for most dehydrators or is the design on this one flawed, having heating on top and right side? Or does it even matter at the end of the day when the doors are closed and the air is circulating?

I'm pretty new to dehydrating in general and while I do have a fruit dehydrator and a jerkey dehydrator I think I'd rather eventually make a pair of bigger dehydrators.

About how big of a dehydrator should I make if say I had to butcher a 100 lbs goat? Or even a whitetail buck?

I have seen people use those electric stove eyes as a heat source but could heat lamps work just as well?

Hey, everyone. I’ve had a little dehydrator for about a year now. I’ve used it before to make garlic and onion powder, and the results were better than I’d expected.

I’d like to try my hand at making jerky with it, and I’ve got some deer meat that I’d love to use. Thinking about a sweet and spicy flavor profile.

How would y’all recommend I go about this, using the dehydrator?

As for the marinade (or seasoning, whichever you call it) I’ve got brown sugar and jalapeno at my disposal. Other than that; I’m not sure what to use. (Or if I should even use that stuff, for that matter)

Anyone have temp/cook time suggestions for sweet potato chips? Do you always have to Blanche them? Mine keep coming out very hard. Thanks for any insight!