My husband recently bought me a food dehydrator (thanks to the Black Friday deals) and I instantly put it to use!

Food dehydrators are an awesome kitchen tool. You can use this machine to dry anything from meat (jerky making), fresh herbs, mushrooms, vegetables, even your own dried fruit leather!

We purchased a Weston brand digital food dehydrator. This particular model has a built in timer, that has a maximum time limit of 48 hours, and a temperature control feature when drying different foods. These features make drying your own food a cinch!

I am especially excited to dry our home grown vegetables so that we can enjoy them in the winter time in soups, stews, and casseroles along with herbs that tend to grow to fast to use them all!

There will be more dried experiments to come but for now, I will share with you my first experience with drying fruit.

We decided to try a variety of fruits including bananas, kiwi, mango, and pineapple. The recipe booklet that came along with the food dehydrator has a chart that lists what temperature to dry fruit at along with how many hours they need to dry.

The following times were recommended at a temperature of 135 degrees Fahrenheit for the fruit I used:

Bananas 6-10 hours

Kiwi 8-12 hours

Pineapple 12-16 hours

Mango 13-17 hours

As instructed, I cut all of the fruit about 1/4 of an inch thick and laid them out on the tray in a single layer, keeping the same type of fruit together so that I could easily remove the trays of fruit that might finish drying first.

(Side note: Banana’s we listed as a color-changing fruit, meaning that as they dry and are exposed to the air, they may oxidize and turn brown. The recipe book does have  a pre-treatment wash to help prevent this color change from happening but I did not treat the banana’s before hand as I wanted to see the difference without applying this wash. Obviously, like anything dried, their bright yellow flesh turned a dark yellow/brown color as pictured but the flavor remained the same…delicious!)

After arranging all of the fruit on the trays, I stacked them based on drying time, putting the fruit that would take the longest to dry on the bottom. Again, this was for the purpose of removing the fruit that would be finished first with ease.

After stacking the trays, I put the lid on, set the timer for 17 hours ( you could set it for the least amount of time and check the fruit at that point and add more time as necessary) since I decided that I would just check the fruit every few hours to make sure all was well without having to reset the time.

My experience was that after 7 hours, the bananas were still pretty soft and squishy. Too soft to remove from the dryer. I decided that I would let all of the fruit dry overnight and finish out the 17 hours.

The results were delicious! Even the banana’s after 17 hours of drying were still somewhat between a chip and a gummy, just what I was looking for! The kiwi’s also took on a gummy texture along with the pineapple whereas the mango developed a leather-like texture.

I was extremely happy with the results of my first go using my food dehydrator. This will definitely come in handy when making healthy snacks!

Tip: I also recommend that you vacuum seal your dried goodies and store them in the freezer to last longer if you don’t plan to eat them right away.

Chase’s take: “Better than candy!” (There is your proof that this is a delicious alternative!)

Here’s to snacking!!