I've been wanting to dehydrate some sprouts and things lately, but I haven't simply because I do not own a dehydrator. It dawned on me that I can set my toaster oven to lower temperatures than the oven. I set it on "warm" and stuck a thermometer inside, and it was about 110. Then I set to "bake" on the lowest setting possible. My thermometer read 100 degrees. I haven't yet tried to "dehydrate" anything using this, as I'm not sure if it's actually cooking the food or not. Would this be somehow cheating?

Yes, I know I should just go out and get a dehydrator, but I'm only a high school senior so I have no money, and my parents are pretty much against my lifestyle choice. I do not want to irritate them further by setting a huge dehydrator on the kitchen counter.

As far as I know, as long as you don't go over 116 degrees (I may be off on that temperature by a bit) it is fine. I did the same thing with my toaster oven to make some stuffed mushrooms and it worked great. And check Ebay for some dehydrators. You can find them fairly cheap on there.

Hope that helps! And hopefully a more experienced person can help with the temperature question.

Kim

I think the toast oven will work, since i've calibrated it with a thermometer. If you want a dehydrator, check you local classifieds. Many people go through dehydrator fads while on health kicks, use it a couple of times, then it sits taking up space until their significant other tells them it's time for the dehydrator (which hasn't been used for a year) to go.

A quick search on my local craigslist.org shows a bunch going for $20 (still money, but a lot less than a couple of $100. If you really get into dehydrating, you can always save up and get a better one.

If you do buy a used dehydrator, take the whole thing to bits and clean everything (especially if stuff can drip in the base), it can be nasty in there and you don't want to do low temp dehydration with nasty things near your food.

I normally dehydrate at 105F (to be on the safe side).

Cheers,
Ian.

I would be very very careful if you decide to use the toaster oven. I assume an appliance like that is not meant to run constantly for hours on end. Some things I dehydrate take 20 hours or more.

Also, you don't have to set the dehydrator on the counter. I set it on the floor in my living room since there wasn't room on the countertop!