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Excalibur 3900 Deluxe Series 9 Tray Food Dehydrator - White

Blog of February 14, 2011, Product Review

Pitchfork © 2011
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Freely quote with attribution

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INTRODUCTION

This is a product review of the Excalibur 3900 Deluxe Series 9 Tray Food Dehydrator - White.  'Fork and The Missus got this kitchen appliance to dehydrate foodstuffs - veggies to start with - in preparation for worse times to come.

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Whassup With This

Kinda pricey, well recommended, safely delivered, easily unpacked, virtually intuitive to operate, especially after the email-shy albeshe both inspirational food dehydratingwise and easy on the eyes Tammy whose YouTubes' dialed 'Fork and The Missus into the food dehydrating mode [please see in this regard, among others by Dehydrate2store, "How to dehydrate and store food PART 1" - the first of a bunch of 'em worth the look-see and the look-see again.  There are plenty of other Web sources for dehydrating info, while Tammy's seems more complete and comprehensive].

So far, 'Fork and The Missus have dehydrated sweet potatoes, white potatoes, Brussel sprouts, celery, carrots, onions, eggplant, head cabbage, peas, corn, broccoli, and cauliflower.

Conclusion:  The Excalibur 3900 did ok.

Let's talk

Things to get straight

• Dehydrating food takes time - at least several hours at a time, sometime the better part of a day, not counting prep, e.g., cutting, slicing, peeling, washing, blanching, and spritsing

• The Excalibur 3900 is noisy - hummmmmm - without relief, unless it's a room or two away and there's at least one closed door in the interim space.  Noisier than the Frigidaire refrigerator.  Not deafening; it's droning noise.  Can hear it through the floor along with the Sunpentown icemaker, but not the Frigidaire refrigerator so much.

• The plastic web mats on which foodstuffs lay and racks supportive of the mats need washing pretty nearly every time you use 'em - some foods are inherently messy - e.g., broccoli for its green bitsies, potatoes for its starch - lemon sprits adds to the stickies, too.

• While there are ledges for 9 racks, beware that the top rack seems not to have the headroom as do the others - would that feel kinda cheap, you think?   Might could.

Dehydrating tips

• Steam blanch small stuff - e.g., chopped and sliced veggies - a little if the produce is fresh.  If frozen from store-bought or if processed some - like baby carrots - before packaging, 'Fork's read it'd be ok to skip the blanching

• (Boiling) water blanch big stuff - e.g., whole potatoes - a little because the produce is fresh

• Sprits with lemon juice to keep color truer to a veggie that's not green, e.g., potatoes - sprits; cabbage - do not sprits

• Go real easy on blanching eggplant - it can go squishy-soft in a rush

• Go easy on blanching whole potatoes, especially sweet potatoes, else they'll handle poorly (goo-up, stick together something awful, grate and dice poorly) in subsequent, cold slicing and grating (test: BBQ spear barely through)

• If you're gonna peel potato skins, then be happy about the sweets the peels of which so far have finger-peeled in small-to-medium sheets; however, for whites, you can trouble yourself mightily with smaller whites (lots of little strokes of the peeler in close quarters with the hand that hold 'em) and over-blanched whites (peeling takes up a bit of potato, too, when over-blanched, and that itty-bitty extra potato can foul the peeler sometimes in only a few strokes, obliging a full stop for clearing the cutters)

• Thoroughly chill whole potatoes before peeling (and even if you don't peel)

• Figure about a fresh pound of whatever per rack - sometimes, you can stretch to, say, mebbe two pounds for small stuff such as peas, if you're ok with taking longer to gitrdun

• Cold water rinse seems ok in lieu of the vaunted ice bath, and a lot less potentially messy and laborious

• Think grating or dicing potatoes and not slicing, in order to reduce stored volume - slices curl up all this way and that - reckoning that either grated or diced can subsequently be converted to mashed . . . same goes for onions.  Since first writing this line item, 'Fork and The Missus sliced some sweets, dehydrated 'em, and gotrdun flat, not urvy-curvy as on Youtube.  The diff?  They sliced closer to 1/4LI thick than 1/8LI thick.  Mebbe it was the lemon juice sprits?

• As for onions particularly, 'Fork and The Missus doubt that they'd ever again dehydrate onions.  Pervasive, persistent odor, red eyes.  Buy Frontier Products dehydrated onion flakes.  25# dehydrated is about equal to 250# fresh.

• You cannot, far as the 'Fork's got it, get a foodstuff too dehydrated; however, it's been said within 'Fork's earshot that you can dehydrate too quickly, thereby toughening-up outer layers of the veggies thusly having been het-up in a hurry

  • Long-term storage and stored moisture in a not-quite-dehydrated veggie are not your friends.  'Fork settles for nothing less than crispy critters.  No exceptions.  When all else looks done-for, check each rack for stuff piled up (denser, dehydrates more slowly), and check lower racks for thicker stems and such (hot air rises, even in the dehydrator). 

  • Crispy critters.  You can test for moisture in a couple of ways - check moisture drops or fog in just-packed, supposedly done-for dehydrated food.  Jar set upside-down to view the glass bottoms-up.  Vacuum-sealed bag in the interior corners.

  • Be prepared to spend longer dehydrating store-bought frozen than for fresh - seems the frozen stuff is wetter, even squirty- and drippy-wetter.  Might could this the gardener's equivalent of the cattleman's 'watered stock'?  Ya think?