How to Dehydrate Food Without a Traditional Dehydrator

Traditional food dehydrators are expensive and often ineffective because they generate too much heat. But you can create your very own, far superior dehydrator using common household objects. Even if you have to buy everything brand new, you’ll still save money compared to electric dehydrators.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Electric box fan
• Paper or cellulose furnace filters
• Bungee cords with hooks
• Fruits, vegetables or meats for dehydrating

1. Prepare your fruits and vegetables by washing and slicing them. If you plan to dehydrate meat, use very lean meat and slice it thin for the best results.

2. Lay one furnace filter flat, and place your cut food pieces inside these grooves. Your furnace filters should have several V-shaped ridges. Make sure your food pieces are not so big that they spill over the edges because you’ll need to place another filter on top.

3. Fill up as many filters as necessary to hold all of your food, but do not exceed five. Stack them on top of each other, and place another filter on top to completely enclose all of your slices.

4. Lay the box fan flat so that the front of the fan is face up. Place the stack of filters on top of the front of the fan. Strap everything together securely using bungee cords.

5. Stand the fan upright, and ensure that the bungee cords hold everything in place. Plug in the fan, set it to high and let it blow air through the food for at least three hours. Different foods dehydrate at different rates, so check on it periodically to gauge when everything is ready to be consumed.

Tips & Warnings

• Place your makeshift dehydrator in a cool place away from direct sunlight while in use.
• The filters are reusable for dehydrating, but should be replaced if they get soaked in liquid of any kind from the food you dry.
• Do not use fiberglass filters for this procedure.

[lifecurbed]

on 9/14/2009 1) Furnace filters are meant to be 'breathing air' safe, so I would imagine any manufacturing byproducts or chemicals on these would be no worse than that which you would be consuming with your prepacked dehydrated and processed foods...as a matter of fact, if alton brown recommends this, I would bet there are less harmful items here than with commercially produced foods. Also, if you're really worried, you could always put down a layer or two of cheesecloth, and only use 2-3 filters stacked per fan, or as your fan's airflow allows.
2)With my experience from dehydrating jerky with this method, I would only 'reuse' the filters if you were doing batches back to back. They do get quite spattered with liquid from the foods.

[oasjchatterbox]

on 9/10/2008 smarguli - I have to say, that is what I was thinking. Your questions are good ones.

[smarguli]

on 4/10/2008 I have two questions:
1) furnice filters are certainly not meant to be food grade safe. how do you know you're not contaminating your food with some manufacturing byproducts?
2) since you're usually putting something wet on the filters for dehydrating, won't every filter you use get "soaked in liquid" and therefore need to be replaced?