Reddit reviews Nesco/American Harvest FD-80 Square-Shaped Dehydrator, Retail,White

There are a billion good recipes online for it. And were a little boring with ours. We do 2 parts soy to 1 part Worcestershire sauce. Plus a few drops of liquid smoke. We marinate thin sliced, leanest meat over night. You may want to do the low sodium soy sauces. Also, marinating in a ziplock bag can help save on the amount of marinate you need to make.

We got one of these with the expansion pack:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00179DCCQ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Its a pretty good dryer. Cleaning is a bit of a pain, either twice in the dishwasher (don't let it dry the first time) or soak them in the tub and scrub with brush. But we usually do enough jerky to last us an age. We make about 4 or 5 batches a year. We also wait for meat to go on sale then we go hog wild. Grocery store butchers are usually pretty good about slicing meat jerky thin.

Was talking about this last night on the ketochat, thought it would be good to share.

I bought an inexpensive dehydrator last week and it arrived so I went ahead and made some jerky.
The first was some weird steak type meat I had in the freezer with alton brown's recipe for the marinade. Yes the honey is a little high in carbs but it marinated a LOT of meat so I didn't substitute it because I didn't know what I could sub it with.

The second type was better, because the butcher suggested London Broil to me (lean meat is better for this, as fat doesn't dehydrate, it goes rancid) and then cut it really thin for me. That was marinated in a 3g carb storebought teriyaki sauce. I'll be trying for a homemade teriyaki next time but both were incredibly tasty, one type sweet and one type smoky and a little spicy.

Next up is kale chips and maybe trying to dehydrate cheese for fun.

This is my setup:

Dehydrator from Amazon.

Also, I highly recommend a jerky gun. It's a little pricey, but I did a ton of research and people say the plastic ones don't hold up like the metal ones do.

I'm about to crank out another batch of jerky here tonight. What I do is pick up 4 lbs of 97% lean ground beef and season it with ~2 tbsp of salt, a tbsp or so of garlic powder, some cayenne pepper, crushed red pepper, and usually some diluted BBQ sauce.

On the batch I'm cooking tonight, I've been marinating the meat in some local bbq sauce (amazing stuff) and Jack Daniels. I can't wait to try it!

It's a bit of an investment up front, but I figure it should hold up well for a long time. With my weight loss, I'm committed to changing my lifestyle as well, and this has fit in perfectly. I took a 12 day road trip last month and I made 4 lbs worth of jerky right before I left and just snacked on it while on the road in lieu of stopping for fast food, and in the mornings instead of the donuts & pastries they had at the conference I attended. I still dropped ~6 lbs during that trip, even though the rest of my diet was more or less suspended.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the tip. I have a bunch of tomatoes I need to do something with. I have almost the same dehydrator as you, except I have the squared one.

I've been making beef jerky for years now. I use a nesco dehydrator, specifically this model: http://www.amazon.com/Nesco-American-FD-80-Square-Shaped-Dehydrator/dp/B00179DCCQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1346783877&sr=8-2&keywords=nesco+dehydrator

It always turns out great, I haven't tried other methods so I can't say much about the cooking the beef thing, but it works. And it makes the house smell great too.

I'd just make your own food to re-hydrate. Get yourself something like http://www.amazon.com/Nesco-American-FD-80-Square-Shaped-Dehydrator/dp/B00179DCCQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1342056174&sr=8-3&keywords=food+dehydrator. If you plan on doing many 3+ day hikes, this is 100% worth it. Whatever you make, just like dehydrated food, you just add water and boil. You could go for a better/faster model, but it has worked for me. If you get this model, buy 2x more http://www.amazon.com/Nesco-SQM-2-6-Screen-Series-Dehydrators/dp/B004ETGYGC/ref=pd_sim_k_2.

Cook what you typically make at home which has moisture, such as stew, soup, stir fry dishes, etc. Use a spatula and coat the dish down onto parchment paper which fits the dehydrator. It'll take around 12-24hrs for most meals on around 85% heat setting.

You can also make great track snacks, like fruit leather. This is a good place to start (notice the inclusion of Apples, the pectin in it is key to forming the leather like texture) http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_fruit_leather/

I recently did Yellowstone for ~10 days, all meals were done this way. It was incredibly delicious, cheap, and more importantly, light weight. The greatest part is cooking your favorite recipes.

Homemade is where it's at. Get a cheap cut of lean meat (fat doesn't dehydrate well), soak it in whatever marinade you want (skip the sugar!) and dehydrate the hell out of it. You can also use ground meat, but I've never tried. Also never tried chicken or pork jerky, but apparently it's doable.

I use a Nesco. I've used it for everything from fruit, to meat, to dog treats, to vegetables (dried a sack full of hot peppers and ground them to a powder). Worth every penny and then some.