For those new to using a dehydrator, a common question is whether or not you have to use all of the trays at any one time.
When beginning to dehydrate food, it’s often a trial and error process — finding out which foods taste best, how long to dehydrate certain items, and how to avoid any mishaps that leave the user with overly dried food that’s inedible.
When using a dehydrator, you don’t have to use all of the trays at once. If you only have a couple of pieces of fruit you want to dehydrate, you may only find yourself needing one or two trays. Luckily, this doesn’t impact the effectiveness of the dehydrating process and in fact, you’ll find that the process goes much more quickly without filling the appliance to the brim with food.
As with any kitchen appliance, dehydrators have tips and tricks to get the best results.
Everyone has different preferences for their dehydrated snack of choice, so finding the best temperatures and time for your favorite fruit or vegetable, or even jerky, can determine how many trays you want to use at a single time.
Is It Necessary to Use All the Dehydrator Trays?
No, it is not required to use all of the dehydrator trails at a single time. When using all the trays, you’d need to have quite a bit of food that you want to dehydrate.
This process can take many hours, sometimes up to half a day! If you want a quicker snack, you can choose to fill a single tray at a time.
Dehydrators work by passing warm air over moist food, which then dries out the food items. This can be done whether there are four trays in the appliance or only one.
If there’s only a single tray the air will be able to work more efficiently and the food shouldn’t take a full 12 hours to fully dehydrate.
One thing to keep in mind when using fewer trays is that the airflow will inevitably change within the dehydrator. This means that you should shorten the length of time that the appliance is running if you’re only dehydrating one or two trays, versus four or five.
There is no risk of damaging the machine when using fewer trays. However, it may be less efficient than loading up the dehydrator with as much as will fit.
If you frequently dehydrate, you should wait until you have a full batch to conserve energy. If you only dehydrate a few things per year, you can go ahead and use a few trays fewer.
While dehydrating with fewer trays results in a quicker process, it will cost more per tray at the end of the day. For those looking to conserve money and energy costs, using the dehydrator to its full capacity every time that it’s used is the recommended method.
Can You Add More Trays to a Dehydrator?
Certain brands of dehydrators come with the ability to add more trays. The circular stackable models provide users with the ability to purchase packs of extra trays and simply stack them higher and dehydrate more food at once.
In other models, there is no ability to add trays as they are already at maximum capacity. If this is the type of dehydrator that you have, you won’t be able to add more trays and will simply have to maximize space in other ways.
You want to ensure that you’re not overfilling your dehydrator, as this can cause an unnecessarily prolonged process. If you have too much, consider splitting it into two batches.
Generally, people like to use one or two fewer trays within a dehydrator as this allows airflow to weave around the food more easily.
When going in the opposite direction and adding more trays, you may find yourself waiting well over 12 hours for a batch to be finished.
For people who dehydrate a large portion of food from their gardens, there is often a specific timeframe that these ingredients need to be dehydrated before they go bad.
If fruits and vegetables are ripening too quickly and you’re concerned that you won’t get them dehydrated in time, you can attempt to refrigerate them to halt the process and preserve freshness for a few extra days.
Can You Dehydrate Different Foods At Once?
When dehydrating food in batches, you’ll want to use foods that are similar to each other. This means that there are no issues when drying different types of fruit at once, as well as vegetables. However, you don’t want to dehydrate meat products with fruits, vegetables, or herbs.
To properly dehydrate meat, you’ll need to set the appliance to a higher temperature than what is required to dry out fruits and vegetables.
On the other hand, there isn’t much difference between apple slices and carrot slices — other than the fact that apples may have a higher moisture content. You can safely dehydrate these food groups together at one time, though you may need to remove the fruit a bit sooner.
If you’re trying to dehydrate herbs and other greens, you’ll want to do those in a batch all on their own. Due to the low temperature that’s required, any other food wouldn’t become fully dehydrated.
Another thing to watch out for is foods that have a permeating odor. This is especially true with fish, such as salmon jerky.
Anything else that’s placed into the dehydrator at the same time as the salmon may end up with a slightly fishy odor and aftertaste, which generally isn’t considered pleasant on a piece of fruit leather.
Other foods such as onions and garlic should be dried separately as well, as they possess a strong odor. An easy method to use when dehydrating several different fruits at once is to put each type on its tray.
This way, you can determine when one is properly dehydrated and simply remove the tray altogether while allowing the rest to continue sitting in the dehydrator for another hour or more. This will leave you with perfectly dehydrated fruit that isn’t overly hard.
When dehydrating several things together, users will want to slice or cut up the food items to be similar in size. This way, they will dehydrate at similar rates. You wouldn’t want to dehydrate large slices of apple along with thinly sliced banana, for instance.
How Do You Properly Clean Dehydrator Trays?
Depending on the brand and model of the dehydrator, many trays are dishwasher-safe. This is often the easiest method for cleaning and sanitizing the trays.
If you’re uncertain whether or not the trays should be placed into the dishwasher, you can always hand wash them and dry them fully before placing them back into the appliance.
If the trays have food that’s been dried and stuck onto them, you can allow them to soak in warm soapy water for 15-20 minutes. At this point, the stubborn food remains should come right off with gentle scrubbing.
After placing the meat into the dehydrator, you’ll want to ensure that the trays have been fully sanitized before reusing them for other food items.
You can find sanitizing sprays at many grocery stores. Dishwashers often have sanitizing cycles as well, making this a great option for fully cleaning and restoring the trays to their original condition.
After dehydrating fruit, dehydrator trays are often covered in a somewhat sticky residue left over from the moisture and the sugar content of the fruit. This can be cleaned with warm to hot water, though it may take a bit of soaking before it wipes clean.
To ensure that the dehydrator trays don’t suffer from a buildup of stuck-on food remnants, it’s recommended that people clean the trays after every use.
Even if they don’t look dirty, there is often a residue left over from the dehydrated foods and if left unattended, this can become difficult to clean later on.