Review: Excalibur 9 Tray Dehydrator (and Some Favorite Recipes)

After 6 years and 3 (going on 4) kids, there are only a few items in our house that have stood the test of time as having been valuable investments. My dehydrator has been one of those investments, saving our family money on healthy snacks while simultaneously making me feel like a good mom.

Product: 9 Tray Dehydrator
Company: Excalibur
Website: www.excaliburdehydrator.com
Price Range: ~$200
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Comments: My husband and I are sort of minimalists. Although our house looks like a toy store threw up, my husband and I don’t tend to buy things for ourselves. (Or our kids, for that matter. They have generous grandparents.) However, I was gifted a 4 tray dehydrator at the baby shower for my first child since the gifter (my single, male boss who probably didn’t attend many baby showers) knew how much I loved dehydrated apple rings. It seemed like a strange gift and got a lot of laughs when I opened it in a room full of mostly women between onesies and baby blankets. When I got home and realized how much had been spent, I was shocked. However, my husband and I used that dehydrator ALL the time, mostly for apple rings and homemade yogurt in our first couple years of parenthood. We used it so much that after having another baby, we felt the need to upgrade to the 9 tray version with nearly 4 times as much drying space. (Our 4 tray version still worked perfectly. We gave it to a friend to free up some counter space.)

Especially now that I have 3 kids, I’m not SUPER strict when it comes to foods lacking in nutritional value. My kids have been to McDonalds a handful of times. Also, I’ve been known to slip them lollipops during moments when I really need them to be quiet. However, for the most part, I like my kids to have healthy snacks and I tend to buy lots of prepackaged, fruit-based, convenience snacks like applesauce pouches, freeze-dried fruit, and fruit leather strips. I give my kids lots of fresh fruits and veggies when we’re at home, but between baseball practice, gymnastics, library storytime, and running errands, most of the time I just rely on whatever non-perishable snacks I have thrown in my car to keep my kids from having a hunger-related meltdown while we’re out.

However, my FAVORITE non-perishable snacks to give my kids are the ones I make myself in my dehydrator. As I write this, tomorrow we leave to go on vacation with our kids which will involve 6 plus hours of driving each way. I am definitely packing store bought snacks to help get us through the trip without spending a fortune. However, over the last couple days I’ve also made batches of some of our favorite dehydrated snacks: “cheesy” kale chips, my beloved apple rings, and dehydrated strawberries. My husband also just finished making 2 gallons worth of yogurt, though we’re not taking that on the trip with us. Other snacks that we’ve made in the past include banana chips, homemade “raisins”, and our own fruit roll-ups. My husband has really been wanting to make beef jerky, but I haven’t been brave enough to try that yet.

Here are 3 of our favorite recipes (not including our homemade yogurt which is a bit more involved):

“Cheesy” Kale Chips

Prep Time: ~45 minutes
Dehydrate Time: about 8 hours
Temperature: 115 degrees

Ingredients

• 2 big bunches kale
• 2 cups cashews (the original directions said to soak for 1 hour and drain, but I often skip this step if I’m short on time)
• 1 large bell pepper
• 4 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• juice from 2 lemons (about 1/2 cup)

Directions: To make “cheesy” kale chips, I use a recipe that I modified from a website which no longer exists called Stacey’s Paleo Kitchen. Basically, I double her sauce recipe and replace most of the salt with garlic powder. My kids LOVE them. We always polish off 1 to 2 trays as soon as they’re done before they make it into any sort of container. However, this one does take awhile to prep. First you blend all the ingredients except the kale in a blender until it’s smooth and creamy. Then you wash your kale, rip it into bite-size pieces, and mix it with your sauce using your hands to get the sauce into all the crevices. I spend at least 45 minutes getting all the trays ready, then leave them overnight in the dehydrator (~8-12 hours) at 115 degrees. Note that this does not actually make enough to fill all 9 trays completely. I usually only use 7 or 8 trays and always leave the top slot empty as my kale never seems to lie flat enough to have enough clearance on that shelf.

Apple Rings

Prep Time: ~30 minutes
Dehydrate Time: about 12 hours
Temperature: 115 degrees

Ingredients

• 10 lbs apples
• cinnamon (optional)

Directions: Apple rings are what got me addicted to my dehydrator in the first place. You do need an apple peeler/corer/slicer such as this one to make the process manageable, but with this tool, they are so easy to make and so delicious. Use your special tool to peel, core, and slice your apple in seconds, then use a knife to cut a slice vertically through the whole apple. Separate your rings onto the sheet, sprinkle with cinnamon if desired, and dehydrate overnight at around 115 degrees.

Strawberry Chips

Prep Time: ~30 minutes
Dehydrate Time: about 12 hours
Temperature: 130 degrees

Ingredients

• 8 lbs strawberries

Directions: There’s nothing fancy about our dehydrated strawberries. For our 9 tray dehydrator, I start with 8 lbs of strawberries and hull them all. Then I chop them into slices about 1/4″ thick. An average-sized strawberry gets cut into 4 or 5 pieces. I used to slice them into circles, but they reminded me of amoebas or something you would look at under a microscope, so now I slice from tip to leaf end. (If you hull a cone out of the top, the middle pieces come out looking like hearts…way better than amoebas, if you ask me.) 8 lbs fills up my 9 trays perfectly. I like to dehydrate everything at 115 degrees, because I read somewhere that food retains more nutrients that way (don’t ask me if that’s accurate), but at that temp, you need to leave the strawberries in for about a day. If you increase the temperature to 130 degrees, you can get by with about 12 hours of drying time.

Enjoy!