$20 Harbor Freight Food Dehydrator Update

Update to http://ilbob.blogspot.com/2010/05/harbor-freight-food-dehydrator.html

Well first the good.

It is still making good beef jerky. I have made well over a dozen batches now. Three pounds of thin sliced meat just about fills all five trays. I or my wife rotate the bottom tray to the top about every 2 hours, and it takes 12-16 hours to finish. I am not real worried about the exact amount of time between tray rotations, so sometimes its more then 2 hours. As the meat dries and shrinks, I move it around so by the time it is done there are usually only 2 full trays or 2 plus a third one that is partially full.

I have adjusted my marinade recipe as follows:

1-1/2 cup vinegar
About 1 tsp each
- ground chipotle peppers
- chili powder
- salt
- ground pepper (mix of black and white, and some red flaked pepper)
- cayenne pepper
- onion powder
- garlic powder

I am not real fanatic about the exact amounts.

I have tried both white vinegar and apple cider vinegar and not noticed any real difference.

I have tried adding soy sauce, worcheshire sauce, and smoke flavoring. None seem to make any real difference so I no longer use them.

I did make a couple of batches where the only flavoring I added to the vinegar was a can of chipotle peppers and a couple tsps of salt. Those batches came out very well. I dried the peppers out and ate them. They were hot, but good.

I have also tried various lengths of time marinading and it seems like it needs to be at least overnight for best flavor. So maybe 12 hours is a good number.

I have also tried marinading it both with and without a vacuum in a vacuum seal container. I can't really tell any difference.

I tried thicker meat once. Did not work real well. About 1/8 to 3/16" thick seems to work best.

I even made a biscuit in the unit once. It took 3 hours to cook, and was not quite done, but it was not bad. I am not sure it was worth waiting 3 hours for a biscuit, but it worked.

Now the not so good.

The instructions suggest using soapy water to clean the trays. I tried this and found it is very difficult to clean the trays this way. I did not want to put them in the dishwasher fearing they were not dishwasher safe, but after the damage to the trays occurred just from normal use I figured it couldn't hurt them any more, so I have been running them through the dishwasher. I have not noticed any additional damage after the dishwasher, and they come out nice and clean.

Cleaning the base of the unit is not real difficult. I just rinse it out with hot water, being as careful as I can not to get the heating element connections any wetter than I have to.

As the photos below show, several of the trays have developed some kind of damage. Several of the the trays have partially deformed, melted, broken or cracked, or some combination thereof. So far it has not affected the utility of the unit, and it may never affect how it makes jerky, but its mildly annoying.

update http://ilbob.blogspot.com/2010/07/20-food-dehydrator-update-2.html