Made my jury-rigged dehydration spacer for the oven, bought some fruit and realized I have no rack.

M

marilynfl

Moderator
Damn.

Damn. Damn. Damn. If I'd been on the NASA team to get astronauts to the moon, I'd have forgotten to calculate enough gas to get them home.

To my defense, I was so shocked that my simple version (as in $0.55 spacer and $4 in magnets as opposed to the $24 OEM version (had it even been available)) worked so perfectly that my brain just went to the end test.

Can anyone suggest a simple solution (as in cheap) since I don't have this option on my Whirlpool in NC. My oven temperatures only goes down to 170 and this oven goes down to 100 so I don't want to spend a lot of money on items I won't be able to use.

Bought strawberries, blueberries and three different types of apples. Hope was springing Eternal this morning. It just didn't realize it would get side-swiped by my brain.

https://recipeswap.org/fun/wp-content/uploads/swap-photos/spacer.jpg

 
You can use cake cooling racks. Space them with some turned over ramekins or

tea cups--or anything that will give you a couple of inches clearance for the stacking.
I used to make jerky in the oven just using the rack for a half sheet pan.
The problem with dehydrating stuff is it takes so much area for things like fruit, etc.

 
Yes cheesecloth and also what about window screen? You're an Engineer, you can make it work

 
Well, no surprise there. For blueberries I would just spread on a cookie sheet--

maybe line with silpat or parchment.
I have dried blueberries all by themselves in the fridge. mUshrooms too.

I don't think these will be as truly "dried" as you might purchase and it would be best to keep refrigerated--or vac seal the dried product.

And I have used window screen long years ago when metal screens were more the case than now. Not sure what they may have as a coating now.
Here's a rube goldberg device
https://www.amazon.com/Wilton-Excelle-3-Tier-Cooling-Cookies/dp/B00030CGKY/ref=sr_1_22_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=grill+rack&qid=1589750065&sr=8-22-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzMFdCTUY1VTJUUFNLJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNTI2ODEzMlJROVg0UkNIQlhCVyZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMzA4ODk1MUdUSjFHQkdXS0FCTiZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2J0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

 
So why was Kitchen Aid / Whirlpool selling the dehydration rack for $43? I thought it had

...some magical culinary abilities that a plain old rack didn't have.

Actually, I thought it might have to be a form of plastic that could take the heat but not react with the acids in the fruit.

 
Success! (with a side of guilt). Dehydrated Pink Lady apples and strawberries

I used a cooling rack over the half-sheet cooking tray. The apple slices were fine, but only large full slices of strawberries worked. Mom ate all the bananas before I could test them & I'm still looking for cheesecloth for the blueberries.

ISSUES:
1. Guilt over running the oven for 3.5 hours on Convection (using 140 degree default) for 1 apple and some strawberries. I wanted to test my MacGyver'd spacer and only prepped one tray.
2. Even some of the larger cross-section slices of strawberries fell through the cooling rack once they shrunk and ALL of them stuck to the tray, but eventually peeled off. Much tastier than fresh with their concentrated flavor. Apples were delightfully chewy.
3. The Kitchen Aid oven manual had absolutely NO INSTRUCTION on how to actually dehydrate anything so I simply made up a solution of one squeezed orange, a squeeze of lemon and some water. Worked very well to keep the apple slices from turning brown. Then I left the oven on the default temperature. Most recipes said 6 hours: I flipped at 2 and pulled them out at 3.5 hours.
4. No apple corer but I found a 4" long by 1" diameter piece of threaded stainless steel pipe (and a hammer) and got that core out.

 
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