Presto Dehydro Digital Electric Food Dehydrator 06301

The thing that bothered me the most about my earlier purchase of the basic Presto dehydrator was that I had to be constantly monitoring it during 6 to 10 hours of drying time. It is nice to set the time and know that it will safely turn off prior to me forgetting to turn it off.

I've never dehydrated before, but I got interested in long term food storage. I read a lot of blogs and saw a lot of videos. This is what I did the first time trying it out. I bought a 5 lb bag of frozen mixed vegetables. You need to line the trays with the included mesh screens or parchment paper cut using the screens as a pattern. ( I have since ordered 4 mesh screens here on Walmart.com) Before filling a tray, I stuffed the center hole with a paper towel. I also put a paper towel under the hole in case anything escaped. Remove the hole blocker before placing tray on the Presto. I filled each of the 6 trays with 3 cups of veggies. There was about half a cup left in the bag which I distributed across 2 of the trays. I set the Presto for 8 hours at 125 degrees. When they were done, I unplugged the Presto and let them sit for an hour. I found that 3 cups dehydrated to 2/3 cup! I put 2 trays worth (6 cups frozen/ 1 1/3 c dry ) in a 16 oz mason jar and had an inch or so of headroom. I plan to use my jar sealer to remove the air. 1/3 cup will be equivalent to a 15 oz can when rehydrated. There are many ideas about how long these will keep, but 2 years seemed to be mentioned the most often in the blogs. I wore a hair net and gloves during all steps. As I told my friends,"Anything to keep me from cleaning!"

Drying apples day in and day out, two batches a day! The only real noise we hear is just enough to let you know it is still running. All trays dry the same and no need to swap trays as they dry. We are only using six trays so don't know about the twelve tray cooking process.

I will admit, I was skeptical at first because of the price, but this thing works great. The fact that you can set the timer and walk away is a great feature. I wouldn't have one without it now. I bought it to make venison jerky, and it does an excellent job with that. I ordered an extra set of trays with my purchase, and I can make around 3 - 3 1/2 lbs each time sliced at 1/4" thick. Very happy with this purchase

This is my first dehydrator and before purchasing a lot of research and review was done of comparable makes and models. The first thing I noticed in hundreds of reviews is that most give bad marks if a dehydrator is not super quiet. Don't let such foolishness sway you. Because the noise level seems to be such a huge factor to most, I will start with that. As far as this unit goes, the noise level of this Presto 06301 Digital Electric Food Dehydrator is comparable to a standard window fan or air conditioning unit. Yet in my comparison, my clothes dyer is louder as is a hair dyer. I would say this unit in no louder than the average microwave in use. The long and short of it is that everyone must come to terms with the facts that all dehydrators have a fan and heater on them and they make noise. My recommendation is that if this is such a concern, after the unit is loaded, place it in a room or area where there is not going to be a lot of people. The unit was shipped really fast for standard ground delivery. When it arrived it was packaged in another box to prevent damage. This Presto 06301 Digital Electric Food Dehydrator comes with the base unit, 6 stackable racks, 2 of the finer mesh screens and 2 of the trays to make fruit leathers and such as well as the clear lid. Wal-Mart's item description was a bit unclear on that, although I ordered extras trays, fine mesh screens and the fruit leather trays to complete the maximum of 12. Personally, after using it the first time, I love the digital controls with and temperature adjustment in both C and F of degrees. The setting goes from a minimum of 90 degrees F to a maximum of 165 degrees F. This unit also have a timer that can count up or down to 48 hours. I do love this feature as I can leave it and know it will shut off by its self, although the instruction do recommend checking what you are dying ever couple of hours. I wouldn't purchase one without a timer. If you do, I would also purchase one of those timers that plug into your wall outlet and the appliance then plugs into the timer. The unit has been used almost daily since I got it without any problems, which would be roughly 6 weeks now. The reason for the purchase is that I own a health and fitness retail business and we have a juice and smoothie bar. We use a number of juicers that we also sell and I was looking for a way salvage the pulp that left over. So basically this was a test unit for us. Using the fruit leather trays, we spread the remains of the carrot pulp on the fruit leather trays. Carrots are more solid than say apples that contain more juices. So it took roughly 6 hours to dry the carrot pulp. After it was dried, we used a food processor to then grind up the pulp much finer and then used a coffee/nut/spice grinder to then grind the carrot pulp back into a fine powder. Because a food dehydrator can dye food without the loss of nutrition, we then reincorporate the various dried fruit pulp powders back into our smoothies. We have been able to recover about 98-99% of the fruit and veggies we buy purchase for juicing and smoothies. As a result we have been able to lower our prices on our juices and smoothies as well as now get more people trying them at our fitness facility! In short the tests went awesome and was tried at home before using it in our store. See the photos! One other thing I would like to comment on that seems to be a factor in most reviews is the drying times. Anyone considering purchasing this unit or any other must be realistic. The instructions clearly state that drying times are only RECOMMENDATIONS and not actual drying times. There are a lot of factors at play here with any dehydrator. Again, carrots, bananas have far less moisture than apples, pears, celery and such. Even jerky meat may vary in moisture content of how you prepare it. Also don't limit yourself to just fruits, veggies and say jerky. I have found numerous recipes for protein bars that can be easily whipped in in a dough form, spread on the fruit roll trays, allowed to dry and then cut into bars. I have also done nuts, berries, fruit, veggies, jerky, cookies to even drying seeds for my garden this next spring! I would highly recommend this Presto 06301 Digital Electric Food Dehydrator to anyone looking for a first time dehydrator or upgrading to one with more features and don't want to invest in say a top of the line Excalibur which start at a few hundred dollars and goes up from there. This unit was purchased for rough $65.00 and just to be able to recover the cost of fruits and veggie pulp into a usable product has already paid for the cost of this Presto Food Dehydrator! Attached photos: 1 shows loading the Presto 6301 on my kitchen table which is off of my living room. I was able to watch tv while the dehydrator was in use. Note: everything seen on the trays was part of a test to see how difficult it would be to recovery pulps from my juicers and instead of wasting it by throwing it away, adding to compost pile, or putting down the disposal, if it could be dried and ground into a powder. You see the carrot pulp spread on the tray in the lower right hand corner. The other photo show the carrot pulp after it was dried on the fruit leather trays on the left. On the right shows the finish product of the carrot pulp ground into a fine powder using a food processor and coffee/spice mill. Below that you also see kale leaves that were also dried and ground into a powder. Love this Presto 6301 and it has been in operation almost daily since it was delivered with no problems!

I have owned this for two weeks now and going on three it has been running everyday and night since I got it, I would suggest you look on you.tub for recipes you would be interested in, and be sure to get them from those that have been doing it for a while, and I also like the Hi Mountain jerky seasonings @ www.himtnjerky.com, I got mine from Cabelas and then watch their video's on you.tub they can get you started in the right direction, and also don't forget to dry your favorite fruits and fruit roll ups they turn out just like candy with out all the preservatives and sugar and just as sweet, I ended up buying all the racks I could put on it (6) more and more fruit trays and also the mesh for each so I can easily do all the same if I should want to and it has a couple of times now. So don't just set their get out their and get one ( I like the one that has the heat from the bottom not the top and adjustable heat control and the timer is a plus). This one is great for the Mid price range, the beginner and seasoned person will enjoy this one. Oh and I have already bought one for my Son and Daughter for Christmas.

I was looking for a not so basic dehydrator, something with more power, since this one offered more, the difference was well spent because I got a digital unit plus 2 non stick mesh screens and 2 fruit roll sheets; its a handsome unit, it's not noisy wich is important. I had a great experience dehydrating whole beaten eggs at 160 degrees in the fruit roll sheets, at that temperature salmonella is controlled from developing and didn't have to cook them before. Herbs keep their color. The temperature guide is the only thing that I found that its not accurate, maybe at sea level it works, but I'm at 1 mile above sea level so I guess that you need to adjust accordingly. I would definitely recommend this unit Love it!

I love this dehydrator. I've used it to dehydrate parsley and bananas. I will use it for many other foods in the near future. I love that it comes with instructions on what temperature to dehydrate certain foods, how to prepare them for dehydration, and the range of time required. It suggests checking the food at the lowest range to determine if done, and tells you how you know when each type of food is done. I have found it to be quite accurate. I'm looking forward to dehydrating more herbs and fruits, and also vegetables. This dehydrator is easy to use, and the instructions are easy to understand. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's loud. If it were quieter, I would have given it 5 stars. I would definitely recommend this product, though, as it's a great value.

I have used the dehydrator once so far to make beef jerky. The unit seemed to dehydrate uniformly. The reason for the "average" score is the noise level. I dehydrate foods overnight and the noise woke me up several times. A friend let me borrow her dehydrator and it was much quieter (Nesco) but would cost twice as much.

It completely died after one hour of being turned on. Frustrating after preparing a ton of nectarines to dry and getting it all going :( May try another one as the product seemed great. Perhaps this was just a isolated incident. Went to the Store to purchase another one but the store only had the lower model which drys to hot and just burned the nectarines. This model seemed to have good heat control until it died.