The drying step is the most important and the most difficult from all steps you need to do to have home-made dried fruits.

The dehydrator

There are several types of dehydrators that have different sizes, prices and different features like timer or thermostat. It is important to choose and buy a food dryer that suits your needs. To make that choice easier, we have developed a tool that helps people choosing their dehydrator just by answering some simple questions. Simply follow the link below:

How to choose your dehydrator that suits your needs

The most famous dehydrator brands are Excalibur, Ezidri, Stöckli, l'Equip and Nesco. But there are many more other brands. You may find a dehydrator in store but you'll find more brands and better prices online. We keep an up to date listing of these online stores (only for Canada, US, France and Australia):

Compare all dehydrators to find the cheapest one

To find more information on each dryer have a look at our dedicated pages: you'll find a photo gallery, all technical details, a list of online stores and all drying times. Drying times are different for each fruit and each dehydrator.

Some tips to dry your fruits:

• tight all fruits together on each tray: drying reduces the size the fruit and you'll have more dried fruits
• if the fruit slices or fruit pieces are rounded on one side (like halves apricot), put the rounded side on the tray to prevent the fruit from sticking too much on your trays (the cleaning will be much easier)
• take notes of all drying you do. Print a sheet notes to record all your results, comments or questions. Once fully completed you can share your results online on the "drying time" page.

Below are useful pages on each fruit which describes how to prepare the fruit, how to dry the fruit and then how to use it with some recipes.