Re: [CH] dehydrators
Chad A Gard (gard@indy.net)
Mon, 1 Jul 2002 09:17:28 -0500
At 7:12 PM -0600 6/29/02, Keegan Smith wrote:
>Hi all,
>Thanks for the responses about dehydrators. (Chad and I are still
>waiting for some more advice on dehydrated soups/meals!)(I think
>Rael is probably right... dehydrate the things you need and throw
>them together, maybe pre-cook things like beans and noodles.)
Question is, how do you taste for seasoning when things are dry...
Don't tell me you have to measure?! Oh, the horrors.
>Question: I think I've read of a home-made dehydrator:
>-make flat-ish boxes with plywood sides, screen/hardware mesh bottoms, no top.
>-stack them on top of eachother
>-for the bottom one, have holes in the sides, and a lightbulb
>-I think the idea is that the bulb heats the air, which flows up
>through your stacked boxes (with fruit on the mesh), and fresh air
>comes in through the bottom holes
>
>Anyone tried something like this? Sounds like it could be made
>fairly inexpensively - and be simple to fix if anything goes wrong.
Probably could, but I don't know that it would be any cheaper than
buying a dehydrator, assuming you were using new materials. Now, if
you happened to have materials already...
I'd probably go for scale if I did something like that. Maybe 3' or
4' square, and I'd use a different heating element. Perhaps a
"burner" from an electric stove. Run on 110 they don't get all that
hot, and should be easy to control with a rheostat.
I know a guy who built a smoker out of an old refrigerator box, a
fan, and two electric burners, in addition to some miscellaneous
stuff. I actually helped brainstorm ideas for integrating it with
his home automation system and keeping the sawdust "feeder" from
clogging when left unattended for a couple of days (he cold smoked
much of the time).
--
Chad Gard, KB9WXQ
INCHASE: http://www.inchase.org Co-founder
INSWA: http://www.insw.org Unit #21