Presto 06300 Dehydro Electric Food Dehydrator, Standard

Having this unit for over 4 years and having used it many, many times I can attest to it's hardiness. My model did not come with an on/off switch or a timer - I didn't care, you might. I do like that this system is almost infinitely expandable, has options for better, tighter-grid mats and cleans up easily. It is a bit on the loud side but that's just how it is. It doesn't bother me, you might hate it. I thought initial capacity was decent but this system is expandable which was important to me. It's still going strong.

I am really enjoying the dehydrator. When I was a kid, and had an easy bake oven, there were a couple of non-desert dishes that used little bits of dried veggies in the recipe. I suppose my fascination with dried ingredients goes back to that date. (Very long ago.) That was back in dinosaur days. Since then, there have been numerous times in my life when I wanted a dehydrator, like when I had a garden with a bumper crop of zucchini or tomatoes. It has been years since I had a garden though. But I have succumbed to the lure, after making zucchini and sweet potato chips in the oven a couple of times. The pros are that this unit is simple to use. Just slice your stuff on a mandolin if you have it, season, and put a single layer on each sheet. There are no temperature controls or timers to worry about.Cons: no temperature controls or timers to worry about. You find recipes that have all kinds of different drying schedules. You just have to use your brain instead of the overly fussy recipe. I have adapted a bunch of recipies that say put it to this temperature or that for x hours, then switch to (some other temperature) for x amount of time. You know what? Dried food is not that picky about the temperature it dries at.I have also seen recipes where people dry things like potatoes for mashed potatoes. I find that pretty silly, since potatoes are cheap, and store easily. The thing about drying foods is that they do reduce a great deal, so why waste 6 hours of drying time to get half a cup of dried potato? At least be creative with it, and come up with something interesting that makes sense. For example, I made some great crackers out of carrot fiber left over from juicing carrots. Juicing fiber would normally just end up in the dog's bowl, or in the compost heap, but now there's a use for it. I'd fix them all the time if I wasn't worried about turning orange. (Yes, too many carrots can make you orange, just as too much Tumeric can make you yellow. Weird, I know.) I have also dried things that were in my refrigerator on the verge of being tossed out: crookneck squash, zucchini, eggplant, sweet potatoes. All sliced on the mandolin, tossed in olive oil and seasoned with Krazy salt, they all made fantastic chips that stayed crispy in ziplock baggies, though all got munched up pretty quickly.My world would be complete if I could find a great recipe for drying sugar snap peas so I could get something like Snapea Crisps that cost something like three or four dollars a small bag at Whole Foods. (Though this week I did find them at Aldis for $1.39.)

I purchased this primarily to make jerky treats for my dog. There have been so many recalls on chicken jerky treats, including from premium American brands, that I no longer trust any of them. In addition, the jerky treats are very expensive.What made me choose this unit was:(1) It is cheap, paid < $40(2) While watts aren't everything in terms of performance, this has the highest watts for the dollar compared to competing brand bargain models(3) It collapses to save space. I had a dehydrator a long time ago and remembered one thing I did not like about it was it's large size and difficulty storing if you have a smaller kitchen.(4) I have a minor preference for heating from the bottom. Since heat rises, this works with nature vs pumping in the heat from the top and so I assumed it might dry more evenly.How does it perform?Operation:With partially frozen chicken, it takes me a very convenient 20 minutes or less to slice and load up the unit with your typical 1 lb+ pack of chicken breast. It will take up no more than 3 out of the 4 racks. Sliced about 1/8-1/4" thick, it will be dry in 4-6 hours. With very thinly sliced meat, it only takes a couple hours. I find I only need to rotate the racks one time a few hours in as the top racks seem to dry a little faster.I've also made sweet potato chew treats. Unless those are cut thin they can take very long. I tried approx 1/2 inch cuts, like you might buy in the pet store, which took 12-16 hrs. The thicker end cuts, with skin on were still springy (not hard like the store, perhaps they bake them).As others mention, it does not have a power switch, it just goes on when you plug it in which is not a problem for me.Noise:I noticed a lot of comments about the "noise". It would be hard to describe this as "loud". My house always some kind of white noise so I don't notice this at all. It produces the same noise level as a small fan. I suppose if you have a very quiet house, the kind where you can hear the grandfather clock ticking away downstairs at night, then perhaps this might be distracting. It still seems a stretch to call this loud.Storage:Even though it collapses vertically, this is still a big appliance in terms of diameter and not easy to store in a small kitchen. Make sure you have room for the approx. 15" diameter. Height-wise, the collapse saves you almost half the height than when it is setup to run.Cleaning:The racks are too big for my dishwasher to load vertically. I think they would be too big in most dishwashers. However, since they are just a plastic grate I find they get very clean just loosely stacking them horizontally. I accidentally left the dishwasher heated dry on once and they did not melt.The bottom is the only cleaning issue. It houses the electronics so there is no putting this in the dishwasher or sink. I just turn it upside down over the sink, wipe crumbs out and then clean it with Windex. it stays spotless but I am just dehydrating plain chicken breast strips and some veggies, so all I have are crumbs. If you are making jerky for humans, which might require a sauce, you would have to be careful with that in this unit. In the middle of the base is a hole where the heat comes out of. It has a screen over it, but I can see liquid drippings being a minor caution. If I was planning to make saucy things like that regularly, I might consider a top heated model instead.In conclusion it is a convenient and useful appliance for the price. For me, it has already paid for itself in dog treat savings.