Review: Excalibur 9 Tray Food Dehydrator

I love dehydrating my own food at home. Not only is it cost effective but I get to make my own dehydrated meals.

For a long time, I was dehydrating with a round Nesco dehydrator that had an on and off switch and that was that. It worked really well for many, many years.

As time went on, I wanted to dehydrate more food and be more efficient about it. The Nesco wasn’t cutting it anymore. It’s still a great machine, but I needed something a bit heftier.

I decided to get the Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator.

There’s another version of this same dehydrator that has a timer on it, but I opted out of that option. I don’t mind turning it on and off. Most things that will dehydrate take anywhere from 6-15 hours so I plan when it’ll be dehydrating. Most of the time I’ll start it at night and when I wake up, it’s done!

Some reviewers have complained of the noise, but in my experience, dehydrators are just noisy. My old dehydrator was a lot louder than this one. All dehydrators are going to be noisy because of how they work. It doesn’t bother me at all. Hearing the dehydrator going makes me happy; I’m preserving my own food!

One of the best pros of this dehydrator is that it’s made in the USA.

Let’s talk about the trays. They are HUGE. I almost think I should have gotten the 5 tray because I’ve never been able to fill up all 9 trays. However, I’d much rather have more trays than less, for sure.

The trays themselves have a very small mesh which makes it difficult for food to fall through. My old dehydrator had really big holes and when small fruits like blueberries would dehydrate, they would all fall through the holes.

Nothing some parchment paper couldn’t fix, but it still would have been nice to have smaller mesh.

There’s no need to rotate the trays or take any of the trays out at any time. Whether you’re dehydrating with just one tray, a few trays, or all of them, you can leave them in.

If you need to move trays out because of bulky items, then that’s absolutely a possibility. The trays come out very easily.

Of course, if you want to do any fruit leather, you’ll still need to use parchment paper.

I love the temperature control option. Going from zero temp control to all the temp control is super nice. It even has a little ‘cheat sheet’ on the top near the temp control that says what temps certain foods should to be at. That’s very handy!

Why would you want to dehydrate in a dehydrator instead of your oven?

Using a dehydrator is more efficient, you don’t have your oven on all day long and you’re not heating up your house for hours on end.

If you want to get into serious dehydrating, you’ll want a dependable dehydrator.

This is one of the top of the line dehydrators, hence the price tag. I had had some trouble with having to exchange breaking dehydrators before I had had enough with cheaper dehydrators not working and finally got this one.

I’m honestly very happy that I spent the extra money. It’s a beast of a machine and something I want in my corner for all my dehydrating needs.

Here’s the only con I could find:

The front cover feels a bit flimsy to me. When you first put it on, you wonder if it’s really on there very secure. There’s no clicking into place, there’s no locking feature, it just kind of sits on a little shelf. It’s not necessarily easy to knock off, but it’s not hard, either.

I’m not dancing or doing gymnastics in my kitchen so the chances of me or anyone else bumping into it while it’s running was pretty slim. Still, the way it fits into place has always been a bit odd to me.

But it seems to work. It is easy to put on and take off. It’s not that it’s ‘flimsy’ or poorly made in anyway, just feels weird the way it’s kind of ‘placed’ on there. It’s hard to explain.

Outside of that one quirk, I’m extremely happy with this purchase. I did not receive this item for free or in exchange for a review. I’m doing it because I really love the dehydrator and wanted to share my thoughts for anyone who may on the lookout to add a dehydrator to their preps and home.

If you’re looking for a dehydrator that’s going to crank out tons of dehydrated goods, this is definitely a great option!