Food Dryer Home

A snack pack of freeze-dried fruit with distinctive tropical flavors. Half the snacks in the carton you could win are these, and half are berry snacks.

Food Dryer Home has found the perfect giveaway to introduce itself to more people: We’re giving away dried fruit!

In our first ever promotional giveaway, we are offering three cartons each holding 24 individual servings of topical snacks and berry snacks. Packaged by Sensible Foods, each serving sells in our local grocery store for $1.70. These dehydrated fruit snacks are low-calorie and delicious; some of the best dehydrated fruit we’ve ever tasted.

Here’s what to do to enter our giveaway:

1. Get one qualified entry by leaving a comment in response to this post. In your comment, tell us what you like to preserve using your food dryer. If you don’t have a food dryer, tell us what you’ll dehydrate when you get one. Multiple comments from the same visitor/email address qualify as a single entry.

2. Get two qualified entries by linking to this post from your own blog or web site. Only one link from a domain will qualify for the two entries. If you’d like to create more links, thanks, but you will earn only two entries. After linking, return here and leave a comment with a link to your web page so we can verify the link… otherwise, we won’t know about it.

3. Get one qualified entry by tweeting a link to this post. In that tweet, mention the twitter name @cityslipper (so we’ll see it and create an entry for you). We’d appreciate multiple tweets, but only one will count as an entry.

4. Visit the two participating blogs where you’ll find a similar post… each of which can earn up to four more entries: One entry for a comment, two entries for a link, and one entry for a tweet. The other participating sites are Small Kitchen Garden and Your Home Kitchen Garden

Multiple entries can increase your chances of winning a carton of fruit, but you cannot win more than one carton per email address or visitor.

This promotional giveaway ends on Friday, November 6, 2009. Our random number generator will select winners on Saturday, November 7 and we’ll post announcements on all three participating web sites.

Technorati Tags: dried fruit, fruit snacks, giveaway, promotion

The first fruit chips I made in my toaster oven/food dryer were sweet, chewy, and delicious. I’ve never been a great fan of raw bananas, but it would be easy to snack all day on banana chips.

For years, I’ve wanted to have a food dryer. Out of sloth, I suppose, I haven’t gotten one. But while contemplating what to plant in my small kitchen garden this spring, my urge to have a food dryer grew intense: I decided to try dehydrating food in my oven.

On my way to the kitchen, it dawned on me: my toaster oven has a temperature-control knob. I wondered if I could set the temperature low enough to dry food without cooking it. Low and behold, the temperature knob had a setting marked DEH. It was designed to be used as a dehydrator!

Banana and Strawberry Chips

I cut 3/8 inch lengthwise slices from several strawberries, and then cut a banana into disks of about the same thickness. I laid these out on aluminum foil, slipped the foil into the toaster oven, and set the oven on DEH. Then I went to bed.

When I awoke six hours later, the strawberry and banana slices were dry on top, but very sticky underneath. With some effort, I peeled them off the aluminum foil, flipped them, and returned them to the toaster oven. Two hours later, I snacked on strawberry and banana chips.

I was amused to learn that I far prefer dehydrated bananas over fresh. Mine hadn’t dried crispy, and the slightly gummy chewiness was a huge improvement in texture over that of a fresh, raw banana.

More into the Food Dryer

While snacking on my first batch of banana chips, I cut up two more bananas, this time setting the slices on waxed paper that I had spread with a light coating of olive oil. The heat of the toaster oven’s DEH setting didn’t seem enough to damage waxed paper. In fact, mid afternoon, I had no trouble peeling the banana chips off and flipping them—and they came off easily that evening.

My enthusiasm for drying food has never been greater. While I continue to experiment with my newly-discovered food dryer, I encourage you to check your own kitchen gear. Running a conventional oven to dry food isn’t energy-efficient, but it will work. Alternatively, a toaster oven with a temperature control feature may hold the temperature low-enough (anywhere from 95F degrees up to about 150F degrees will work, depending on what you’re drying) to dry food without cooking it.

Conventional and toaster ovens develop hot spots, so you’ll have better results with a convection oven. You might also consider building a solar-powered food dryer; links at the end of this post lead to plans that may help you get started. Of course, the most efficient food dryer is a machine specifically designed to dry food. You’ll find many highly-praised models in my Food Dryer Store, powered by Amazon.com.

• Building A Solar Food Dehydrator In My Backyard. | The Good Human – After seeing a diagram of what one might look like in a magazine, this weekend I spent some time building my first solar food dehydrator. And while it was somewhat of a success, there are some changes I will be making on the next …

• How To Make and Use a Home Food Dryer | Mother Earth News

Technorati Tags: food dryer, food drying basic, toaster oven