When it comes to choosing the best dehydrator for jerky, you'll want to make sure that the food dehydrator can do a number of things to ensure your jerky ends up tasting great and has a lot of flavor. There's nothing worse than eating jerky that tastes like plastic.
The most popular and the best dehydrator for jerky is the Excalibur 3900 Deluxe dehydrator. The reason it's the best homemade beef jerky dehydrator is because it produces the best tasting jerky. The Excalibur has the following features which makes it the best dehydrator for jerky.
Quick drying time
This model of homemade beef jerky dehydrator can dry 10-15 pounds of beef in 9 to 10 hours. That's a lot of beef. If you don't have that much meat to dry, it will take even less time. Two batches can be dried in 6 to 8 hours. Fruit and vegetables can be dried in around 4 to 6 hours and taste like they've been sun-dried.
The Excalibur can dry meat that fast due to the powerful fan and heating element on the rear of the dehyrator. Having a homemade beef jerky dehydrator that can dry meat fast helps retain the flavor, and the flavor becomes concentrated.
This is better than a fanless convection dehydrator. A fanless convection dehydrator doesn't dry the meat as quickly and you lose some of the flavor. The fan in the Excalibur, along with the temperature control circulates hot air to speed up dehydration process.
This means that the meat dries evenly, and there's no need to rotate the trays. You can set and forget. That's a lot easier than having to watch and rotate trays all the time.
Fan and heating element at the rear of the dehydrator
This is a big plus when you want to make homemade beef jerky with a dehydrator.
A lot of
homemade beef jerky dehyrators have the fan/heating element on the base of the dehydrator. When you put meat on there to dry, meat drippings fall onto the heating element and you get smoke, and damage caused to your dehydrator. It can also make your jerky taste a bit off.
The Excalibur has the fan and heating element at the rear of the
homemade beef jerky dehydrator which means no meat drippings on the heating element. This keeps your heating elements and fans clean, and your jerky tasting great.
