The crockpot dehydrator experiment
I really hate buying new gadgets if I'm not sure I'll end up using them. I have a fairly good track record - the bread machine, the crockpot, and the ice cream maker see reasonably frequent use - but the other problem is that I have a pretty small kitchen, so if I can make something useful for more than one purpose, that's great.
I was curious to try dehydrating fruit, and started reading up about it. There's a method for doing it in your oven, but that involves leaving the door cracked open, and that's just not gonna work with a small child in the house. Then I had an inspiration: the temperature you're aiming for with fruits is around 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and I realized that temperatures in a crockpot will reach around 200F; if the lid was open a bit, it would be lower.
Many dehydrators use fans, but the oven method doesn't. Since air currents move slowly inside an oven (unless you're using a convection oven, which has a fan), I figured the air currents inside a crockpot would probably be sufficient too. Having the lid be partially open would allow an air vent, as well as keeping the temperature lower.
This seemed like something other people would have tried, so I looked around on the internet, but could find almost nothing other than queries and one awkward-looking contraption that uses a crockpot base to heat another compartment. Alrighty then, time to figure it out myself.
First, I started with my crockpot. It's been a long time since we bought it, so I don't remember what capacity it is, but it seems medium-sized.
I bought a small cookie rack at a dollar store (although of course it cost me $2, since dollar stores are rarely dollar stores these days). Here you see the problem: it's way too big.
I used a Sharpie to mark little black marks showing where the rack would need to be cut to fit into the crockpot, then pulled out my snips and cut most of it to size. Not gonna lie, this part was a hassle and took a good 20 minutes.
Using two pairs of pliers, I bent the two sides. I'd originally planned on having the bent-down part resting on the bottom of the crockpot, but it fit better leaving it facing upward. The rack sits about halfway down in the crockpot.
Time to add some fruit! I washed and halved apricots, then pushed the skin toward the middle to flatten them some (this apparently helps them dry better). The rack fits about six apricots at a time (12 apricot halves).
I put the lid on so it was cracked a little bit (look toward the front edge), and set it on High.
Every few hours I'd take the lid off and wipe away any condensation that had gathered on the inside of the lid. There wasn't much, but I didn't want to risk it dripping on my fruits. I also flipped the apricots a couple times, although I don't know if that was really necessary. After about six hours, they were well on their way to being dehydrated, but as they shrunk some fell through the cookie rack's slats. I took this picture after I'd rescued some apricots from the bottom and rearranged them on the rack. I didn't want that to happen again, so I decided to add some netting.
I took the net out of one of those grease-catcher things (I had it around the house, but it was also $2 at a dollar store) that you put over frying pans to catch the spatters. I bent it to fit into the rack.
I added my apricots again, and there was plenty of space left over. Now that I had a net, I decided to add some more delicate fruits, so I thinly sliced (1/4") some kiwifruit and strawberries and added those.
Around nine hours in (three hours after I'd added the kiwifruit and strawberries), I checked it and discovered I had my first dehydrated fruits! I took them out and left the others to continue drying. (Sorry it's just a half-strawberry in the picture, I couldn't resist eating half of it immediately. And if you're used to seeing orange dried apricots rather than brown ones, that's because you're used to seeing grocery-store dried apricots have been sulfured prior to drying so they maintain their color; I didn't want to sulfur mine.)
Unfortunately I don't have a pic of all the rest of the fruit, because as the rest of them dried over the next two hours, I'd take them out and the kids would eat them as soon as they'd cooled enough.
The crockpot-dehydrator experiment worked fine for apricots, strawberries, and kiwifruit. There's a few ways I'd like to improve it for next time:
* I want to figure out a way to have two racks, so I can increase the yield;
* The strawberries were a little hard to peel off the netting unless they were 100% completely dry, so I want to try using some Pam to see if that helps;
* I'd like to see if there's some way I can catch condensation so I don't have to wipe the lid every few hours; and
* I want to devise a more stable rack, since if I knocked into it it would skew and then I'd have to fix it. This may be as simple as just cutting the rest of the way around the rack (eliminating the bent-down parts) and using four or six aluminum-foil balls underneath the rack, to hold it up.
I'll continue to refine it, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Obviously this wouldn't be suitable for large-scale dehydrating, but if you just want to dehydrate a small batch, it's fine. It's extremely inexpensive, since running a crockpot costs just 2.5-3 cents an hour*. Since we have the lid slightly cracked, the cost is probably a bit higher than that, but even if we double it to 6 cents an hour, we've just spent less than $0.75 to run the crockpot dehydrator for 12 hours (and if we're drying small things or slices, it would be much less; the strawberries and kiwifruit took no more than 3-5 hours). Considering how expensive dried fruits are in the stores (especially if you're looking for organic/unsulfured fruits), it's a good savings. My cost for creating the dehydrator setup was $4 total ($2 rack, $2 grease-catcher) and maybe 40 minutes of work, and I can use that setup again and again.
* I looked at a number of websites that discussed the costs of running appliances; the listed range was generally 2 or 3 cents. For comparison, the cost of running an oven was usually listed around 40-50 cents per hour.
ETA: Blueberries! These took about seven or eight hours on High. They were the larger-sized cultivated blueberries, not the small wild blueberries.
I was curious to try dehydrating fruit, and started reading up about it. There's a method for doing it in your oven, but that involves leaving the door cracked open, and that's just not gonna work with a small child in the house. Then I had an inspiration: the temperature you're aiming for with fruits is around 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and I realized that temperatures in a crockpot will reach around 200F; if the lid was open a bit, it would be lower.
Many dehydrators use fans, but the oven method doesn't. Since air currents move slowly inside an oven (unless you're using a convection oven, which has a fan), I figured the air currents inside a crockpot would probably be sufficient too. Having the lid be partially open would allow an air vent, as well as keeping the temperature lower.
This seemed like something other people would have tried, so I looked around on the internet, but could find almost nothing other than queries and one awkward-looking contraption that uses a crockpot base to heat another compartment. Alrighty then, time to figure it out myself.
First, I started with my crockpot. It's been a long time since we bought it, so I don't remember what capacity it is, but it seems medium-sized.
I bought a small cookie rack at a dollar store (although of course it cost me $2, since dollar stores are rarely dollar stores these days). Here you see the problem: it's way too big.
I used a Sharpie to mark little black marks showing where the rack would need to be cut to fit into the crockpot, then pulled out my snips and cut most of it to size. Not gonna lie, this part was a hassle and took a good 20 minutes.
Using two pairs of pliers, I bent the two sides. I'd originally planned on having the bent-down part resting on the bottom of the crockpot, but it fit better leaving it facing upward. The rack sits about halfway down in the crockpot.
Time to add some fruit! I washed and halved apricots, then pushed the skin toward the middle to flatten them some (this apparently helps them dry better). The rack fits about six apricots at a time (12 apricot halves).
I put the lid on so it was cracked a little bit (look toward the front edge), and set it on High.
Every few hours I'd take the lid off and wipe away any condensation that had gathered on the inside of the lid. There wasn't much, but I didn't want to risk it dripping on my fruits. I also flipped the apricots a couple times, although I don't know if that was really necessary. After about six hours, they were well on their way to being dehydrated, but as they shrunk some fell through the cookie rack's slats. I took this picture after I'd rescued some apricots from the bottom and rearranged them on the rack. I didn't want that to happen again, so I decided to add some netting.
I took the net out of one of those grease-catcher things (I had it around the house, but it was also $2 at a dollar store) that you put over frying pans to catch the spatters. I bent it to fit into the rack.
I added my apricots again, and there was plenty of space left over. Now that I had a net, I decided to add some more delicate fruits, so I thinly sliced (1/4") some kiwifruit and strawberries and added those.
Around nine hours in (three hours after I'd added the kiwifruit and strawberries), I checked it and discovered I had my first dehydrated fruits! I took them out and left the others to continue drying. (Sorry it's just a half-strawberry in the picture, I couldn't resist eating half of it immediately. And if you're used to seeing orange dried apricots rather than brown ones, that's because you're used to seeing grocery-store dried apricots have been sulfured prior to drying so they maintain their color; I didn't want to sulfur mine.)
Unfortunately I don't have a pic of all the rest of the fruit, because as the rest of them dried over the next two hours, I'd take them out and the kids would eat them as soon as they'd cooled enough.
The crockpot-dehydrator experiment worked fine for apricots, strawberries, and kiwifruit. There's a few ways I'd like to improve it for next time:
* I want to figure out a way to have two racks, so I can increase the yield;
* The strawberries were a little hard to peel off the netting unless they were 100% completely dry, so I want to try using some Pam to see if that helps;
* I'd like to see if there's some way I can catch condensation so I don't have to wipe the lid every few hours; and
* I want to devise a more stable rack, since if I knocked into it it would skew and then I'd have to fix it. This may be as simple as just cutting the rest of the way around the rack (eliminating the bent-down parts) and using four or six aluminum-foil balls underneath the rack, to hold it up.
I'll continue to refine it, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Obviously this wouldn't be suitable for large-scale dehydrating, but if you just want to dehydrate a small batch, it's fine. It's extremely inexpensive, since running a crockpot costs just 2.5-3 cents an hour*. Since we have the lid slightly cracked, the cost is probably a bit higher than that, but even if we double it to 6 cents an hour, we've just spent less than $0.75 to run the crockpot dehydrator for 12 hours (and if we're drying small things or slices, it would be much less; the strawberries and kiwifruit took no more than 3-5 hours). Considering how expensive dried fruits are in the stores (especially if you're looking for organic/unsulfured fruits), it's a good savings. My cost for creating the dehydrator setup was $4 total ($2 rack, $2 grease-catcher) and maybe 40 minutes of work, and I can use that setup again and again.
* I looked at a number of websites that discussed the costs of running appliances; the listed range was generally 2 or 3 cents. For comparison, the cost of running an oven was usually listed around 40-50 cents per hour.
ETA: Blueberries! These took about seven or eight hours on High. They were the larger-sized cultivated blueberries, not the small wild blueberries.