Nesco Gardenmaster Pro Food Dehydrator, 8 Trays

Did plenty of research before purchasing. I have processed several herbs from the garden….even catnip! It does make a fan noise so I use the it in the carport or on back patio or in kitchen when I’m not home. It’s already on its way to paying for itself and I can’t wait to dehydrate the tomatoes!

Deshidrata muy bien pero solo duró 3 meses

I got this about 10 days ago and have been putting it through its paces. I have dried sweet corn, peas, peas and carrots mix, green beans (both cut and french style), mushrooms, strawberries, apples, bananas, pineapple, celery, and hash brown potatoes. Today I am going to try butternut squash (grated — and blanched — to make it dry faster, and I use it to make a pureed soup so I don’t need chunks), mango, and kiwi, and don’t expect any problems.
I am so glad I got this model because it comes with things I didn’t know I would need. I would have either had to buy the accessories, or I would have just not has as good an experience drying food. First if all, when I run it, I love that I have 8 trays so I can fill the thing up. The 8 mesh liner things are something I would not have thought of, but now I use them with every time. When drying corn or peas, the food shrinks down so small that it would fall through the tray slats if I didn’t use the mesh liners. With fruit, the food doesn’t stick as bad when using the mesh liners (tip: flip the fruit over after about an hour and that helps as well). Lastly, the mesh liners are so much easier to clean than the trays themselves, so I just use the liners over the tray and it saves clean-up effort.
The machine itself is a great design. The design of the air flow means that you don’t have to rotate trays — unlike my old one. The heat is pretty true as well. I set it for 135, and stuck a temperature probe down the center hole and it was spot on. The machine is bigger than my old unheated one (that I gave away) and holds a lot. It dries really quickly, and the food shrinks down insanely small. I figure I could dry at least 50 of the 12 oz bags of frozen corn, peas, or pea/carrot dice blend and they would fit in a dozen wide mouth quart jars. (Beans and hash brown potatoes would not shrink down as small.) I have reconstituted every vegetable I have dried to see if it is worth it, and so far the only one that isn’t a great success is celery (2 bunches shrunk down to about 1 cup!), but I figure I use that as the base with onions when I make soup, and I can just pulverize the dried stuff into powder so I still get the flavor. Just remember to blanch the things that need to be blanched (most vegetables) or save yourself some effort and buy frozen vegetables (which are already blanched).
The only criticism I have is that the fan is rather noisy. Annoyingly so. I can’t have it running in the kitchen because we have an open concept and it is too loud to be running while we are doing anything in the living room. I run it in the laundry room, and that is my work around. Some people don’t like that it doesn’t have a timer, but I have several plug in timers we use when we go in vacation so I just pulled one out to use when I want to let the machine run for awhile (but not all night) after I go to bed. Since I already have a timer, it wasn’t worth the extra cost to buy a machine with one built in. The machine is certainly more expensive than Nesco’s base model, but with the extra trays, mesh liners, and fruit leather trays, the price evens out and it is nice to just get it all in one shot. The plus in that is that everything fits in the box for storage, so I don’t have extra trays that don’t fit in the box. It’s a big box though…it certainly isn’t going to fit under any bed!

This was an upgrade for me from a oooold school 1992 Ronco (no fan or on/off switch or temp control) that I found at a garage sale for $5. The Nesco is awesome as far as evenly dehydrating the food – I DO NOT have to rotate the trays like I had to do (exhaustively) with the Ronco. This is a great package with a good number of trays for me (8), and the full two sets of liners (1 mesh and 1 solid for each tray) are fabulous. I mainly dehydrate fruit (bananas, strawberries, blueberries, apples, and the occasional citrus), but I did a batch of jerky, and it came out very well. I will be doing that again. I like the on/off switch and temp control. The range of temps look like they will cover anything I get inspired to dehydrate. Also, in general but especially compared to the Ronco, this Nesco is FAST. What took the Ronco 8 hours and sometimes overnight takes the Nesco 4-5 hours. Depending on the shape of the food, some of it may take a bit longer, but it’s a huge improvement over the Ronco. The cons (but not dealbreakers for me) are 1) It’s LOUD. I‘m not sure what to compare it to – not quite as loud as a blender, but at least as loud as the stove vent fan. I’m pretty good at tuning out white noise, but it’s something to keep in mind if you have sensitive hearing – you may need to find a way to get some distance from it while it’s running. I don’t have that option with this floor plan, but it doesn’t bother me. 2) The trays are too big to fit flat in my 40 year old sink. This is due to the design relating to the air flow that makes me not have to rotate the trays (and my outdated sink), but it is a wet-messy project to wash them in my kitchen, even with a high faucet. To make it easier I ALWAYS use the mesh liners. They fit much better in my tiny sink, and I can let them soak if needed. Since the trays are so big, the unit does take up a LOT of real estate on my counter, and unfortunately, I need my big-enough-to-fit-this-monster cabinets for food storage because I do not have a pantry (how is that even possible?). In that 5-ish by 2.5-ish foot chunk of counter, I have a blender, the Nesco, an Instant Pot (8-qt.), and a KitchenAid stand mixer, and this is also the stretch of counter where I do meal prep. It works for me. With those two concerns, I wasn’t comfortable giving it 5 stars, but I would totally give it 4.75 if I had the option. I have no regrets with this purchase.