I've always wanted to make a real food dehydrator myself, but all the instructions I found always started with the words: "make a box...". It pissed me off! I don't have the patience to make a box, let alone the skills to make it square and then add a stand (also square!), so I came up with a super easy way to make a container similar to a store-bought electric mushroom and berry dehydrator out of a cardboard tube. It took me less than an hour and about a thousand rubles. I could cut my costs in half, and I'm sure you can too!
How to make a regular dryer for vegetables and fruits
An excellent DIY drying rack can be made from an old cabinet, bedside table, or you can use a wooden box. An important condition is to choose the sizes. Additionally, you will need a temperature sensor and a fan heater. For trays you will need a stainless steel mesh, a lath, metal corners or small nails.
Frame drawing
If you have a suitable bedside table, manufacturing becomes much easier. Craftsmen sometimes adapt the body of an old refrigerator, stove, stove, without even removing the glass.
The process becomes more complicated when creating a cabinet with your own hands from boards. But in this case it is easy to implement any ideas and choose the required size. You can use a drawing of any cabinet or bedside table as a basis. Just substitute your sizes. We think in advance about the number of trays for any vegetables, as well as ginger, apples, apricots, pears and other fruits.
Dryer assembly
Assembling a vegetable dryer with your own hands from scratch is more difficult. We'll have to make one with a door. The situation is simpler with an unnecessary cabinet. The main task is to distribute the “filling”.
Instructions for assembling the dryer with your own hands:
- Hot air and steam must escape. Therefore, we make sure to make holes on top. It is allowed to install a pipe. Sometimes mesh is installed instead of plywood.
- If a mini-fan is to be used, install it in the back wall of the cabinet. The heater is a wind blower, the tiles are usually mounted from below.
- Next we make mesh shelves. Don't forget about the runners. Trays should extend. Sometimes they simply nail the slats to the side walls.
The distance between the trays should not be less than 15 cm. The air between pieces of fruit or prepared vegetables should circulate, and the hand should be easy to pass for stirring and turning over the products.
Which heating element or fan heater to use
To increase the temperature inside the structure, we do not recommend using a regular heating element. Wood-burning cabinets are rare these days. If there is an accidental fire, there will be no fire, as is the case with firewood. Materials begin to smolder and release harmful substances.
It is better to take a heater with a fan or a fan heater. They are often called wind blowers. There are models in small sizes. Another option is to use a small electric hotplate. The advantage of this method is that it is easy to regulate the temperature by setting different modes.
Temperature
The temperature for drying depends on the type of medicinal raw material. Thus, plants containing essential oils should be dried at a temperature no higher than +35 degrees (at higher temperatures, the essential oil evaporates). Raw materials with a high content of vitamin C (for example, rose hips) are dried quickly, at high temperatures (+70...+90 degrees). Plants whose main active ingredients are glycosides are also dried quickly (to stop the activity of enzymes that destroy these compounds), but at lower temperatures - +50...+60 degrees.
What did the chest of drawers turn into?
I purchased black acrylic paint. I mixed it with cement (without water), adding it a little at a time so as not to thicken the paint too much. Then she immediately began to apply it with a brush to the surface in layers: first in one direction, then in the opposite direction. While the board was drying, I washed my brush thoroughly.
The surface of the board became a little rough, which is convenient for writing with chalk. What is written can then be erased with a damp cloth, just like on a chalkboard.
In advance, at the Do It Yourself store, I purchased a decorative, deliberately rough cord, some twine, a set of colored crayons, and a box of rubber bands.
My husband drilled two holes in the board, through which I pulled the cord and tied two tight knots so that the suspended board would hang tightly and well. Then I marked the surface and screwed in the remaining vintage handles from the chest of drawers in a checkerboard pattern. But there may be a more democratic option: nails, hooks, screws. I got 4 handles in one row, and 3 handles in the bottom row. I planned to hang herbs from them.
Features of drying some types of medicinal raw materials
Berries and juicy fruits should be dried before drying.
This is best done in the sun; if the weather is not pleasant, the raw materials are placed on a tray or baking sheet covered with several layers of paper, which is changed as it becomes saturated with juice. The berries prepared in this way are dried in an oven or dryer at a moderate temperature. Flowers and inflorescences dry quickly, ensuring good ventilation. It is undesirable to stir them up when drying, so lay out the raw materials in a thin layer. Large leaves are laid out one at a time and turned over after the upper part has dried.
When using a dryer or oven, raw materials often turn out overdried. To prevent it from crumbling during packaging and turning into dust, it should be kept indoors for some time, allowing it to absorb some moisture from the air, and only then put it into bags or containers.
Confusion - away
There are plants, especially forest and field plants, that after drying change their “appearance” beyond recognition.
Sometimes you get confused - what kind of plant is this and what is it intended for? To prevent this from happening, I decided to make a hanger board, the front part of which was turned into a slate one.
Here, of course, the experience of working as a teacher for a long time had an impact.
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What tools and materials to use to create a dryer for vegetables and fruits
The name of the materials depends on the selected model. More often you need a box, a cabinet, or a suitable box. It is important to use temperature-resistant materials. Additionally, you will need trays or grids, fan heaters, heating elements, and other heating elements. The exact name depends on the selected model.
We do not recommend using composite wood for the body. When heated, such materials emit harmful substances and an unpleasant smell of glue. Vegetables, herbs, berries and fruits will absorb it all.
How to make an infrared dryer for vegetables and fruits
Infrared film is used for electric heated floors. But you can use it to make fruit dryers yourself. In this case, a fan heater is not required. Heating elements are not needed either.
Frame drawing
In fact, it is allowed to take any design of drying cabinets; even ordinary shelves are suitable. We select the size of the infrared film for them. It can have a width from 50 to 100 cm. The second important point is power. Vegetables and prepared fruits will dry perfectly on the 220 W film. At the same time, the dehydration process will not entail significant electricity costs.
Do-it-yourself assembly and installation of infrared sheets
Above we already looked at how you can make a simple dryer. Here we will learn how to connect infrared film with our own hands. You will need a 50 W soldering iron, scissors, and some knowledge.
Step-by-step instruction:
- Unwind the film. Next, cut into ribbons along the dotted line. You cannot choose other places.
- We arm ourselves with a soldering iron and heat it up. Next, remove the insulating film from the copper conductive strip.
- We drop a little tin into this place and solder the contact.
- After cooling, wrap with insulating tape.
- You can use special terminals instead of soldering. They are sold in stores and are easily installed with ordinary pliers.
- Next, we lay the infrared film on the shelves. Cover the top with paper. Now vegetables, any herbs, fruits, herbs, let's start drying!
Do not use a powerful soldering iron. The film will suffer from it, melt, nothing will work.
How to determine when drying is complete
Well-dried raw materials, as a rule, retain their natural color (yellowed or blackened leaves, faded petals - evidence that the plant was dried incorrectly, and most likely, its healing properties have been lost).
Berries and juicy fruits are considered dried if, when you squeeze them in your hand, they do not get dirty, and the raw materials remain crumbly and do not stick together into a lump. After drying, the roots should break with a crunch, and the leaves and flowers should be ground into powder.
Where and how do you dry medicinal plants for your home medicine cabinet?
What could be simpler and cheaper - make a frame, cover it with mesh and tie it into a hanging bookcase?)
The method of application is just as simple - hang it from the ceiling on 2 hooks in a bathhouse or above the stove, arrange herbs or vegetables, mushrooms. There is very little firewood, since it is not winter, but you can prepare a lot for the winter. These include spicy herbs - parsley, dill, cilantro, spicy watercress salad with horseradish flavor, basil and even chard, beet and carrot greens.
Thanks to forced drying at 40-50 degrees, such greens dry out in a day, have an unsurpassed taste and aroma, and retain their green color.
When drying in the attic, some greens may turn yellow due to the longer drying period.
Forest greens are also stored for the winter - mint, mint, primrose, nettle, plantain, goldenrod, clover, coltsfoot, oregano, tansy, wormwood, fireweed, St. John's wort, nika...
Vegetables that turned out great were dried tomatoes, kohlrabi, beets, pumpkin, sweet peppers, carrots, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms.
Drying vegetables and mushrooms slowly will not work, as they will spoil and drying is the right solution.
You can dry berries and fruits.
You open the lid with dried tomatoes in winter, and the warm aroma of summer pours out. Children sweep away instantly!
If you liked this material, then we offer you a selection of the best materials on our site according to our readers. You can find a selection - TOP about existing eco-villages, family estates, their history of creation and everything about eco-houses where it is most convenient for you
When my wife and I became interested in “gathering,” the question of a dryer for herbs naturally arose, and since we collect a lot of different things, the dimensions of the dryer must match. I didn’t immediately come to the decision to assemble it myself; As usual, I first studied the sales market on the Internet. However, I was unable to find something that was optimal in terms of price and practicality, so after estimating the volume and finding a suitable place, I still came to the conclusion that I could easily do it myself.
An empty room on the second floor has been chosen for the placement of the dryer for about 5 years:
I have long wanted to separate this room with a wall (I even unscrewed the railing to the right of the stairs), but somehow I never got around to it, and there were doubts whether it would become too dark in the hallway, since a good half of the daylight comes into it from above; but the bookcase, I thought, would fit just right: both practical and light.
So, the place has been chosen, you can proceed:
I didn't draw any diagrams or measure exact dimensions. Like everything else in the house, the shelving was made on a whim. I have a picture in my head and that’s enough for me. To begin with, the starting and ending points of our dryer were marked horizontally, this distance was divided into 3 parts; it turned out to be about 70 cm for each compartment. At the construction market I bought 3 furniture boards, a package of bars and self-tapping screws.
The first rack turned out to be the shortest, since the walls in the room are not vertical and at a distance of 70 cm it rests on the slope on which the roof lies, I measured this distance with a tape measure:
Before fixing the board, for convenience, it is better to screw the shelf holders right away. The distance between them was 15 cm.
We place the finished rack against the wall, making sure it is level:
Using a level, we bring the vertical alignment to perfection:
And we tightly screw the rack at the bottom to the floor, at the top to the wall, since the house is wooden.
We carry out the same procedure with the second board. It will be higher than the first one, because There is nothing stopping her in her quest to hit the ceiling.
We also place it 70 centimeters from the first one and screw the screws into the floor and ceiling:
With the third it will be even easier, since the shelf holders are attached only on one side, because this rack completes the structure:
The rack is ready, it's time for the drying shelves. I assembled them from leftover lumber and old clapboard scraps, which I found in abundance in the shed, where they are stored from my past “projects”.
We carefully fold the frame on the floor; the dimensions, naturally, must exactly correspond to the width of the furniture board and the distance between the racks. However, a play of 1 cm is allowed in the direction of reduction - this will make it even easier to insert and remove our drying trays-shelves. In our case, we got a frame 70 x 40 cm:
We nail our old lining to the frame with furniture nails:
We get this nice drying tray:
We put paper or, better yet, pieces of fabric into it and think: “Hurray! everything worked out".
But don't rush to rejoice. Firstly, because there is still a lot of painstaking work ahead to produce additional shelves in the amount of 31 pieces.
Secondly, because during the first tests some shortcomings were identified in the manufacture of shelf-pallets.
When we loaded the first batch of lungwort into the dryer, we discovered that as the grass dried, the paper or fabric sagged in those places where there were gaps between the paneling on the shelf.
Therefore, all other drying shelves were urgently modified in a very simple way. Namely, the jute twine was secured with a zigzag stapler in problem areas:
Voila! For almost 2 months now, the herb dryer, assembled at home, in an empty room on the second floor, has been in operation quite successfully, and in addition to practical benefits, it also delights us with the Music of tastes and aromas.
Drying chamber for meat and fish products
Protein products can also be dried in the dryer. This process is called drying. A dehydrator for meat and fish can be made from a plastic box
with a suitable size lid. For manufacturing you need a fan, a piece of pipe or coupling, threaded rods, washers and nuts. There are a number of videos on how to make your own cabinet for drying meat products. A very simple assembly option is presented in the video below.
Making your own food dryer if you have the necessary components is a relatively easy process. There may be many more assembly options than discussed. It all depends on imagination and possibilities. Also, any homemade model can be automated so that the drying process causes as little trouble as possible and requires virtually no personal intervention.
How to make a solar dryer for vegetables and fruits
The simplest homemade fruit dryer works without a fan or heater. It is located outside. For manufacturing you will need nets and wooden slats.
Frame drawing
The frame is a closed mesh cabinet on legs. All sides are covered with mesh. It is advisable to use food grade stainless steel. The number of trays is arbitrary. It is important that the air circulates freely.
We make sizes at our discretion. More often they make large cabinets with their own hands so that at least a bucket of processed vegetables and fruits ready for drying can fit at a time. This results in a lightweight design. You can always move it to another place. Some products are dried in the sun. For greenery and medicinal herbs, choose canopies and shady places.
We recommend screwing small wheels to the legs of the mobile dryer. They are sold in furniture stores.
What happens to a plant when it dries?
The healing effect of plants is due to the content of certain chemical compounds in them, and our goal is to preserve them as much as possible.
But in a living plant various biochemical processes constantly occur, as a result of which some of the active substances are destroyed (it is no coincidence that the collection of medicinal raw materials is recommended to be carried out at a strictly defined time - when the concentration of useful elements is maximum). Drying stops these processes: the activity of cellular enzymes requires an aqueous environment. By removing moisture, we stop intracellular processes that lead to the transformation or decomposition of active substances. And accordingly, the faster we dry it, the less we lose.
Well, in addition, various microorganisms and molds readily multiply in a humid environment - high-quality drying of medicinal raw materials protects it from such damage.
