Nesco Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator, Gray

I bought this dehydrator mainly to make beef jerky, and after seven months of use we have not been disappointed. So far we have made the following:
– beef jerky
– orange slices
– grapefruit slices
– apple slices
– banana slices
– green beans

There are many recipes for beef jerky, but I would recommend the one on allrecipes.com which is a good, hearty, all-around tasty jerky. The Nesco came with packets of jerky spices, but I haven’t used them, nor have I used the Nesco recipe. Just slice your beef (an electric knife is best), marinate overnight in a mixture of Worcester, soy sauce, pepper, garlic, onion, cayenne, and pepper flakes, then dehydrate them on high for 8-10 hours. Delicious!

The jerky can be tough to chew. They recommend slicing against the grain, to minimize the length of fibers, which does help a bit. I’ve tried pounding the beef with a 48-blade tenderizer to make the jerky less tough, but it doesn’t really make much difference for all of that work, though it does help with marinading more thoroughly. The best solution I’ve found is simply to take smaller bites, and it’s just easier to chew up! Lasts longer, too.

The other success story is apple slices. I don’t bother with their special fruit tray. Just core and slice the apples (we have one of these old fashioned “Johnny Apple Peeler” hand cranked models that does a whole apple in 10 seconds, a must-have if you do a lot of apples), stick them on the regular trays, and give it about 8 hours on the fruit setting. I freeze the slices afterwards to maximize longevity. I bought a 6-pack of mealy, mediocre apples off the local supermarket discount cart for $1.29 and dehydrated them — and they turned out sweet and delicious. Then, after a month or two in the freezer, in a freezer bag, they became apple crisps!

I would also recommend trying orange slices. Give it a good 12 hours because there’s a lot of liquid to evaporate. They come out sort of like orange crackers. They’re crunchy and delicious, peel and all. It’s not for everyone, perhaps, but a great trail food along with dried apples and beef jerky.

The green beans came out unappetizing. Note that one side effect of dehydration is to concentrate the flavor. The grapefruit came out rather bitter. Still not too bad but don’t expect it to be a hit with the kids.

Some people use it to dehydrate herbs and spices from the garden. We haven’t tried this yet but for this, you probably do want to use the provided special tray that has smaller gaps.

The product is assembled in the U.S. from domestic and foreign components. That’s OK with me; a little is better than nothing. At least they have a factory here. The important thing is that the company make a good quality product that lasts a long time, and so far, there have been zero problems with this unit. If anything goes wrong, I’ll update this review.

One deficit is the lack of a built-in timer. However, this problem is easily solved with a $5 lamp timer you can get from the hardware store or online. You just set it to turn off at a certain time, and then you can go to bed or go to work with no worries. It’s handy when you have prepared a 10-hour batch of beef jerky and it’s only 4pm; you can rest assured it will run the required amount of time and shut off at 2am. Jerky is designed to last for weeks at room temperature, so it will be fine to leave it in the machine for a few hours. The salt is a preservative, but without sulfites or other preservatives, it’s a good idea to freeze the jerky and it will last you for weeks or months.

This is a great appliance that is very easy to use. We love using it, it’s not too noisy, and the main problem has been finding a spot to keep it in between uses, in our crowded kitchen. I have just ordered two more trays, to be able to make larger quantities; they just stack right in and add a couple of inches to the height of the unit, no big deal.

I really love this machine. It is my first real dehydrator, and what I’ve managed to do with is is excellent. The nature of such machines is that you either need it for way more than it can handle at once, or not at all. (Who, for example will dry out one apple, or carrot or potato? These things come in multi-pound batches.) That being said, it’s quick, which means that you can move through your batches reasonably quickly.

It’s very easy to use, and it’s reasonably quiet. You can hear it if you stand around it, but otherwise it is not much louder than my refrigerator. That the fan is at the top makes it odd to manipulate, but makes perfect sense as a design choice. All of life is tradeoffs.

What I really like about it is that I don’t need to swap the plates around, everything dries evenly across the whole machine. It is also very easy to clean. I wish that it would have come with a couple more liquid sheets and fine-screen meshes, but I can buy those. Those that came with it be default were a reasonable offering.

This surprised me a little bit, but the book that came with it included instructions on dehydrating a variety of items. I would not have thought that this would have been particularly valuable, but it turned out (and continues to be) quite useful. It’s a small thing, but I believe that manuals are good indicator of a product’s quality and attention to detail by the people who make a product.

If I have one minor complaint it would be that the machine lacks and on-off switch. One might perhaps be included in the thermostat dial. The only way to turn it off is to unplug it. It would be nice to simply flip a switch before lifting the lid and setting it down. Overall, I’d say that this is a good deal. The quality seems pretty good, and I think that I can count on it for many years of growing seasons. I’ve already recommended this model to three family members just because I like it.

** Update June 2019 – I’ve been using this dehydrator about every 2-3 weeks to dry fruits (mostly apples) and for making beef jerky. I soon realized that 5 trays was not enough to keep up with how fast my kids devour the dried apples and how fast I go through the jerky, so I’ve bought 4 additional trays since my initial purchase to increase the capacity. One thing I’ve noticed is that when I added the 4 additional trays (for a total of 9), the drying time increased by about an hour for jerky and about 1.5 hrs for the apples. It still doesn’t dehydrate evenly (never did from the beginning), so I’m still rotating the trays at the halfway point to get even drying. This dehydrator is rated to use 12 trays, but given how the drying time increased and how it currently functions with just 9 trays, I’m not confident that this dehydrator can truly handle 12 trays, so I’m not going to be buying any more trays. However, that being said, the dehydrator is a workhorse and I haven’t had any issues with the motor or the heater shutting off or any nonsense like that. Still very happy with this unit!! **

I was a little wary of buying this model because it didn’t have an on/off switch. I’m not sure why that was going to bother me so much, probably because everything else seems to have one. But since i don’t plan on leaving this dehydrator plugged in at all times (like my toaster or coffeemaker), I’ve realized that I really don’t need an on/off switch for the dehydrator.

I was also wondering if I should spend some more money and get one with a digital temperature selection and wondering if I needed to step up from a simple dial control. After having used this dehydrator for the past month or so, I realized that the digital temperature control would have done really nothing other than add cost to the dehydrator.

The dehydrator itself works great. it’s straightforward and easy, but there are a few things:
1. The dehydrator touts it’s ability to provide even and equal airflow throughout the entire space so that you don’t have to rotate trays. Well, that doesn’t seem to work exactly as they hoped. I find that the trays closest to the heating and fan element (top) dries out much quicker than the tray on the bottom. It took me a few runs to figure this out, so now about half way through the drying process I swap the trays and put the top on the bottom and vice versa.

2. The trays stack well, but it is very difficult to get them perfectly aligned to satisfy my inner OCD. I’m not sure if they are designed to have as much wiggle room as they have, and I’m not sure how much it affects drying time and efficiency of the dehydrator, but it’s annoying that the sides are not always flush fit.

3. The trays are a bit of a pain to clean due to all the nooks and crannies where the food juices get stuck and dry out. Nothing a little water, soap, brush, and elbow grease can’t scrub out, but when there’s about a 100 or so crevices in each tray, it gets very annoying. i guess i could throw the trays in the dish washer, but I’m always a bit wary about throwing delicate looking plastic things in the dish washer.

Otherwise, the machine works great and I’ve been able to make beef jerky at home to satisfy my cravings at a fraction of the cost of buying them at the grocery store, with the option to make the jerky as spicy or sweet or savory as i want. I’ve also used it to dry mangos and kiwis and this dehydrator has worked great. I’ve soon found out, as many others have, that I definitely need more than the 5 trays that come with it.