BIRD DOG

I need help - what is the best dehydrator you can buy for the money out there - Consider reliability and cost with price - for deer jerky?

Arrowmaster

I have a Mr Coffee dehydrator. It works very well. I only dry deer and beef jerky in it. Works great in my book. It takes between 4 to 7 hrs to dry it to my taste.

BIRD DOG

I need to dry about 40-50 pounds - probably a commercial grade?

coyote170

I have four American Harvesters from Wal Mart and make a ton of jerky
every year,they work fast easy to clean,you can buy extra trays for
the dehaydrator,pardon the spelling,intend to buya couple more as
am makeing buffalo jerky along with the beef and deer and have one side
of my shop set up for makeing jerky!

wildchild04

I'll second the Walmart dehydrater. I made my whole deer into jerky.

Lately, I've done a 2 stage jerky drying,... I put it in the oven for a couple hours at 200 degrees, until it is dried enough that the jerky will stay together when I pick it up. Then I put it in the dehydrater trayssetting the jerky strips on it's side.

Doing it this was, I can put 5 pounds of jerky on 2 trays in the dehydrater, which will help speed the process.... since using alot of dehyrator trays slows it down.

NavyDeerHunter

Here is a new idea for you. Flipping through the channels I saw on food network where a guy was making beef jerkey. He said that the heat that is created by dehydrators is not so good for the jerkey (I forgot the logic he used) so he uses a "cold drying" method which is pretty simple.
He had a good ole standard window box fan like this. We probably all have them laying around.



Then he got some pleated furnace/air conditioner air filters like you use in your house, about a buck each at Wal-mart.

Put the jerkey in the pleates, stack as many filters as you need, bungie them to the fan and plug it in for 6 to 8 hours with the air blowing through the filters/over the jerkey.

I'm going to try it this year just for fun.

txjourneyman

I have a Jenn-Aire oven and cook top with a grill. The oven has a built in dryer. It works great. I wouldn't have it if it didn't come with the house. Those things are pretty spendy.

leehop

navy, sounds ok for drying byt it dosen't do any thing to kill the bactiria that causes spoilage. After cold drying, it will have to be pasturized. Put it on racks in the oven at 165 or more for an hour. Mightalso prevent the trots.

armedic1

The wal-mart dehydrator works great. I used it yesterday to make about 5lbs of deer jerky and it turned out great. About 3hrs per batch and it took three batches with the number of trays provided. Using grounddeer in the jerky gun worked the best for me. I talked to a guy yesterday that saw the show about using the air filters and fan, sounds interesting but i'm curious about the bacteria, doesn't sound real sanitary.

Steve F.in MD

I have a table top dehydrator that works OK. Last year I bought some racks from Cabelas that allows me to make bigger batches. The racks worked very well and took less time. It's all good!