Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What food dehydrator do you use for making jerky, drying fruits, vegetables, herbs?

I was looking at getting an Excalibur food dehydrator for drying fruits and vegetables but, primarily be used for making jerky.

Drying rack next to a woodstove

Get the Harvest Right.

I've using the Cabelas Pro Grade for about 15 years, still purring.

I’ve been using a friend’s old Magic Aire II for years and years.
I finally decided to get my own.
They are a discontinued item, but EBay had some listed.
Now I have 2of my own.
Very easy to use.
Very easy to clean.

LEM 10 tray mighty bite

The GF suggested getting a freeze dryer? $3k.

9 tray Excalibur

https://excaliburdehydrator.com/products/excalibur-9-tray-no-timer-solid-door-black

Nesco Snackmaster from Fleet Farm. Like 100 bucks.

Emeril Legassie's. He has pretty women in his commercials.

The excalibur is worth the money, can do so many more things in it besides just make jerky. My wife even makes her own yogurt in ours. Does a much better job of drying and dehydrating than the cheap ones. On a side note about the freeze dryer, a friend of mine has one and honestly there isn't much that comes out of it that I would eat. It does an ok job on freeze drying vegetables but unless you are trying to save weight to pack them somewhere home pressure canned in jars has a lot better taste. He does all kinds of stuff and I have tried most of it and I guess if I were starving it would make a turd but that's about all I can say for it.

Wife loves her Excalibur.

My 9 tray Excalibur even when loaded to the nuts with jerky requires no rotating or any other such nonsense that is often required by the cheap ones.

LEM Big Bite


I used one of the cheap, WalMart dehydrators for years. It died and I bought another. A few years ago, I finally bit the bullet and bought this model with the stainless steel racks. My only gripe with it is that it did not come with a drip tray. At the time I bought it, they did not offer one. Today, I see they now sell a drip tray for it, so I just ordered one. Why it doesn't just come standard with one bewilders me. I hated lining the bottom with aluminum foil.

Short of that, it is awesome! I can fit an entire deer on it to dry assuming it wasn't an exceptionally large deer.

An old white round American Harvester.

Prolly came from the Walmarks some 20 yrs ago.

No frills. Does the job.

Bought another from a yard sale for the trays.

I run 2x the trays on it.

Harvest Rights have come down in price(about 2.5K for the medium). This is the model that you want to be. They do a fantastic job if you know how to run them. The key is that you have to keep the oil in the pump clean. We do a tremendous amount of fruit- three loads per week. We also do meats that are low in fat. We have a Presto dehydrator for mushrooms and a LEM 10 tray stainless for jerky and meat. The secret to the LEM is making sure that you rotate the trays. We have been slowly putting together preps so we would be fine if we have 6 months to a year without going to grocery store. We have basic subsistence for two years but we have what we generally eat for about 4 months.

I’ve never needed to rotate trays on the LEM. Set timer for 8 hours and all is done.

I'm like this guy ^^^ but I also have an old Mr Coffee one that might get some use this year. Both are likely well past 15 years and the American Harvester gets used every year, multiple loads.

OP, how much are you planning on doing? I just bought a 27lb box of apples to go with the 10+ lbs a friend donated me. 1/2 will likely be dried, the rest turned into applesauce and pic filling. It's made plenty of jerky too. If the 4 trays that come with it are not enough, get add on trays for it, I did.

Quick tip: Spray your racks with Pam before drying jerky. It sure makes cleanup easier!