I currently own two food dehydrators, an older American Harvest FD-1000 Gardenmaster 3400 (apparently now replaced on the market by the Nesco/American Harvest FD-1010 and FD-1020) and a newer Excalibur 3926T. Here is their story:
Why I Bought the Dehydrators
Back in the mid-90’s, I had gotten tired of canning tomatoes. Eliot Coleman (in his book The Four-Season Harvest) was enthusiastic about dehydrating them, and specifically recommended American Harvest’s stackable round dehydrators. I bought their larger model, the Gardenmaster, and it did indeed do a fine job on tomatoes (as well as pears and other miscellany). But just a few years later I got busy with final plans for our new house, and the Gardenmaster saw very little use, even though I left it all set up, ready to go (and literally collecting dust, as it turned out).
Then in May 2008, I switched to 100% raw food for a couple of years and the Gardenmaster returned to active duty, this time as my “oven” for raw cookies and crackers. It seemed to take an awfully long time to finish each batch, though. Also, the fan motor would slow down from time to time, then speed back up. I no longer remembered how it had behaved in prior years, and thought perhaps it was merely adjusting its air flow — until one day I smelled something, and turned to see a wisp of smoke rising from the Gardenmaster.
I panicked, of course. Everyone else in the raw-food community seemed to own an Excalibur, the updated successor to the boxy home-made dehydrators of the 70’s. So (after unplugging my smoke machine) I ordered their largest model (in white). It did occur to me, however, that perhaps all my old Gardenmaster needed was just a new fan motor, so I took it to the local fix-it guy (one of a dying breed, alas!). He found nothing wrong with the motor, just a lot of dust, cat hair and other general crud jamming the fan’s rotation. All it needed was a good cleaning and oiling.
So Which Is Better?
Once my ten-year-old Gardenmaster was back from the doctor, it ran like new. I’ve been using it side-by-side with my brand-new Excalibur for six months now, and have no overall preference. People who say that Excaliburs are better than “round” dehydrators seem to be comparing them to the cheap discount-store or late-night-television brands, some of which don’t have a thermostat or even a fan. I consider my Gardenmaster and my Excalibur to be equally good. Each is better in some ways, but worse in others. I’d hate to be without either of them. If all you care about is the bottom line, there it is. But if you’d like to know why I prefer one or the other in specific ways, see my Detailled Comparison, below.
By the way, I know a few people who are quite satisfied with their cheap discount-store dehydrators. If you just want to get things dehydrated, some of those may do a perfectly adequate job — I can’t speak from experience here. But if you want to protect your food’s enzymes while you’re dehydrating it, you need a dehydrator with a reliable thermostat. That’s because dehydrators can get hot enough to actually cook food. Both my Gardenmaster and my Excalibur have thermostat settings up to 155 degrees F (68 degrees C) — enough to cook a beef roast medium-well-done! I keep mine set on 120 or so.
Detailled Comparison
Please note that my venerable Gardenmaster is a model FD-1000, which is no longer available. Some of the details described below may be different in the current FD-1010 and FD1020, for better or for worse.
Design: The Gardenmaster’s fan and thermostat are contained in its base. Depending on the amount of food to be dried, anywhere between one and thirty doughnut-shaped gridwork trays can be stacked on this base, then topped with a lid that’s solid except for a hole in the center. The fan is located in the center of the base, under the “doughnut hole” in the trays and lid, with a protective piece of window-type screening above it. The Excalibur is a rigid box with slots for a fixed number (four, five, or nine, depending on the model) of slide-in trays. The only openable side is the front, which is covered in use by a removable door.
One Design Flaw (now fixed): Even though nothing larger than a grain of rice can fall into the Gardenmaster’s fan, thanks to the above-mentioned screen, it is still easy for dust, lint, and small crumbs to sift on through, potentially jamming the fan’s rotation, possibly posing a fire hazard. There are also slots around the edge of the top side of the base, which can allow somewhat larger items to fall into other parts of the works. The current Gardenmaster FD-1020 has addressed this problem by moving its fan to the lid. If I needed to replace my FD-1000, I would definitely look into the FD-1020. Its maximum capacity is only twenty trays, but I currently own/use only twelve anyhow, and since the two models use the same trays, the four that come with the new machine would bring me up to sixteen.
Meanwhile, I keep the lid in place at all times, and keep the center “doughnut hole” covered whenever the machine is not in use. I’m careful, when placing food on the trays and when removing it, to avoid dropping or dripping anything down the middle. I turn the base upside-down now and then, to dump out as much crud as possible. And I’m extra careful when filling the Fruit Roll Sheets with anything runny, lest it overflow and drip into the base.
Even though the Excalibur’s fan, thermostat, and optional timer are also somewhat exposed, they seem less likely to collect debris, because they are not under the trays, they are behind them, inside the back wall of the box.
Construction: Except for the Gardenmaster’s enamelled sheet-metal base, both machines are made primarily of plastic, but it’s reasonably sturdy plastic in both cases. Nesco’s phone representative tells me that (as of December 2009), their Fruit Roll Sheets (see Non-stick Sheets, below) and Clean-A-Screens (see Handling Little Things, below) are made from uncoated polypropylene. This is plastic #5, reputed to be more heat-resistant than most, and relatively non-leaching. The Gardenmaster’s trays will yellow if exposed to direct sunlight for extended periods, and sunlight (or perhaps simply age) also seems to make them more brittle — when I picked up a heavily-loaded tray, supporting some of the weight by allowing the inner grid to rest on my fingertips, one of the small grid pieces cracked slightly. I now handle the Gardenmaster’s trays only by their rims, which are much sturdier than the gridwork, and I store them away from direct sunlight. My Excalibur isn’t nearly old enough to have developed any age-related problems yet, but its trays do sag a big under moderately heavy loads such as muffins. They are clearly not over-engineered! However, the company does offer stainless-steel trays, made of quarter-inch mesh, to fit their larger dehydrators. They cost more than the plastic trays, but it might be worthwhile having one or two, for casserole dishes, pizza with the works, and other relatively heavy loads.
Maintenance: Neither machine’s instruction manual calls for any home maintenance other than simple cleaning. When major work is needed, the Excalibur web site offers replacement parts to the do-it-yourselfer, whereas the Gardenmaster is not designed to be taken apart at home.
Loading: When it comes time to put food into the dehydrator, either machine’s trays can be moved to a counter or table work area for loading. Alternatively, the Gardenmaster’s trays can be loaded while sitting atop the base (and atop any previously loaded trays), so that they do not need to be moved at all after loading. This can be a real advantage with, for example, small crackers made from a runny batter, that tend to develop awkward pseudopods if the tray is jostled or tilted. Although the Excalibur’s trays can also be loaded while in the machine, they need to be pulled most of the way forward for loading, then slid all the way back in for drying. When they’re pulled forward, their front ends tend to droop down a bit, and when they’re slid back, there’s an inevitable bit of jiggle. Also, when I remove the door in order to insert a loaded tray, there’s the awkward question of where to set the door. The counter next to the dehydrator already has the loaded tray on it, and the top of the dehydrator has the big bowl that I’m loading the trays from.
Speed: Frankly, I don’t baby-sit my dehydrators. I check the food whenever I think of it, and when it seems to be done, I take it out. But I have never noticed that either dehydrator works faster than the other, even when I’ve had to split a recipe between the two of them. Critics of “round” dehydrators claim that food won’t dry evenly in them unless you rotate the trays, but I’ve never bothered. Things in the very top tray of my Gardenmaster do seem to dry just a little faster than the rest.
Non-stick Sheets: Some dehydrated foods start out as a liquid or a runny batter. To dry these in the Gardenmaster, I have their standard uncoated polypropylene Fruit Roll Sheets, which are actually very shallow round plastic bowls, with a hole in the middle to fit the dehydrator trays. For the Excalibur, I have the ParaFlexx Ultra Silicone sheets, which are flat. For some things, either set-up works fine. But for other items, I definitely prefer the Gardenmaster. My gripe with the Excalibur is that things (like fruit leather or some crackers) that curl up as they dry will pull the flexible silicone sheet right along with them, making it a bit tricky to peel off, whereas these same items tend to pull themselves free of the Gardenmaster’s more rigid sheets as they curl up.
It may be relevant that I did not buy Excalibur’s standard ParaFlexx Premium sheets (because they are coated with Teflon, which I choose to avoid). The Teflon sheets are advertised as more truly non-stick than the silicone sheets, but I can neither confirm nor deny this, since I have had no experience with the Teflon ones. While looking up specifics for this review, I did run across this advice (not in the Cleaning section of the manual, but inside the back cover): “DO NOT SOAK your Paraflexx sheets — this will damage them. Simply wipe ….” This was apparently written with the original ParaFlexx Premium (Teflon) sheets in mind, and wiping may indeed be sufficient for them, but a brief soak is the only way I’ve found of getting the Paraflexx Ultra Silicone sheets clean.
Oddly enough, my Gardenmaster Fruit Roll Sheets are clearly of two different types, even though I bought all of them last year, all from the same place, all in one order. My favorite ones are semi-transparent, so that if I look through them on a sunny day, I can see the shapes of my kitchen windows very plainly (but that’s not why they’re my favorites, merely how I can tell them apart). The reason I prefer them is that things hardly stick to them at all. The others are merely translucent, so that the windows show up only as blurry bright patches. These are quite usable, but things sometimes need a moderate amount of encouragement to come free of them.
Handling Little Things: Both manufacturers offer tray inserts made of plastic mesh, for dehydrating things that are small enough to fall through a tray’s regular gridwork. The Gardenmaster’s uncoated polypropylene Clean-A-Screens are extra-cost add-ons, whereas the Excalibur’s Polyscreens are practically standard equipment, frequently included with a new dehydrator at no charge. This is presumably because the Gardenmaster’s basic trays have much smaller spaces in their gridwork, about 3/16 inch (5 mm) wide by a little over an inch (28 mm) long, and can be used as-is for most things (I have only the one Clean-A-Screen that came free with the machine, and rarely use it), whereas the Excalibur’s trays have very wide spaces, over two inches (55 mm) square, and definitely need the mesh inserts. Although the two brands of screen inserts are cut differently (round or square) to fit their respective trays, they appear to be made of an identical plastic mesh, with holes about 1/8 by 3/16 inches (2 by 4 mm). Anything small enough that it might fall through the mesh needs to be dried on a non-stick sheet.
This re-raises the question of how non-stick the sheets really are. I have found that seeds and most other small items will slide right off the Gardenmaster’s smooth sheets, whereas many types will stick tenaciously to the Excalibur’s somewhat tacky silicone sheets, and need to be pried off one by one (again, their Teflon sheets may work better, I don’t know).
Handling Big Things: Some recipes call for dehydrating things (such as muffins) that are too tall to fit in the regular space between dehydrator trays. Other recipes call for dehydrating things (such as pizzas) that are relatively wide. And a few recipes require the dehydrator to hold an object (such as a bowl) that is both tall AND wide.
This is one department where the Excalibur has the clear advantage — to allow headroom for Victoria Boutenko’s yummy Cranberry Scones (which seem more like muffins to me; see her Raw Family Signature Dishes book for the recipe), simply omit every-other tray. But if I wanted to make the scones in my Gardenmaster, I’d have to smash them down flat. (I’m sure they’d still taste fine, but they’d look more like cookies.) Nesco does offer Convert-A-Trays, essentially tray rims with removable gridwork, which can be used to add an extra inch (28 mm) between trays, but they are currently available only for the Snackmaster line of smaller dehydrators (and as of December 2009, Nesco’s phone representative did not know of any plans to introduce a larger version).
The Excalibur is also the clear winner for wide items. Even though its trays are no wider than the Gardenmaster’s, they are all usable space, with no “doughnut hole” in the middle. The Gardenmaster can’t quite handle a 6-inch (15-cm) pizza, whereas the Excalibur could take a 14-incher (35 cm). Need I mention that the Excalibur can also handle that tall, wide bowl with ease?
Capacity: In the large models that I own, the area of a single Excalibur tray is about 50% larger than that of a single Gardenmaster tray, so that a fully-loaded nine-tray Excalibur holds as much as 13 or 14 Gardenmaster trays. The Gardenmaster, however, can be set up with only one tray for very small loads, or with as many as thirty trays (the equivalent of two entire Excaliburs!) — and the base unit apparently adjusts its air and heat output accordingly. I can testify that my Gardenmaster works quite well with anywhere from one to twelve trays (which is all that I have), whereas my large Excalibur is always large (and their smaller models are always smaller).
Counter Space: In the large models that I own, the Gardenmaster’s footprint is about 15.25 inches (39 cm) in diameter, and the Excalibur’s is about 16.5 inches (42 cm) wide by 19.25 inches (49 cm) deep. The Excalibur is about 12.25 inches (31 cm) tall (a bit more if you count the dials), and the Gardenmaster’s height ranges from about 6 inches (15 cm) with one tray to something like 38 inches (96.5 cm) with 30 trays.
Noise: Both machines make a modest amount of noise when they’re running, due to their fans. I haven’t noticed any difference between the two, either in tonal quality or in volume.
Heat: Both machines give off a bit of heat after they warm up. This makes the kitchen a little cozier in cool weather. During hot weather, I used to move the dehydrators out to enclosed porch off the kitchen, but hot weather here is usually quite humid as well, so the dehydrators work considerably better in our air-conditioned kitchen. Again, I haven’t noticed any difference between the two machines.
Controls: The controls of both machines are analog dials. The thermostats are calibrated in ten-degree F (5.5-degree C) intervals, from 95 or 100 (35 or 38) degrees up to 155 (68). I really like the way my Gardenmaster can be rotated so that the controls are conveniently in front, or at the side where they won’t be accidentally bumped, or even at the back, away from inquisitive little fingers. There’s also a no-nonsense on/off switch. The Excalibur’s controls, in contrast, are in a fixed location, on the top of the machine, way at the back, where they are difficult to read or reach. The on/off function is combined with either the thermostat dial or (in the model that I own) with a 26-hour timer dial. I have never intentionally used this as a timer, but it does turn the dehydrator off when it reaches zero, and my impression is that it’s accurate. The current Gardenmaster FD-1020 has a digital thermostat and 48-hour timer, but I have never used it, so cannot comment.
Life Expectancy: My ten-year-old (or so) Gardenmaster is still going strong, after only one minor bit of professional attention. I can’t yet say from personal experience how long an Excalibur might last, but their optional ten-year warranty is sometimes offered at no extra charge.
Prices: The nearest thing to my model 1000 that Nesco now offers is the Gardenmaster FD-1010. It comes with four trays, one Fruit Roll Sheet, and one Clean-A-Screen for $150. Extra trays are two for $25, additional Fruit Roll Sheets are two for $10, and Clean-A-Screens are two for $8. A nine-tray Excalibur 3900 in basic black costs $270 (and, according to an email from Excalibur, “Polyscreens are included in most offers,” but check to be sure). Nine ParaFlexx sheets would run $67.50 (for Teflon) or $94.50 (for silicone). Both companies sell models with timers for $20 to $30 more. HOWEVER, both companies also offer frequent sales (and prices are subject to change), so be sure to check their web sites, as well as any other reputable sites that offer their products.
Suggestions for Excalibur: Next time the Excalibur company designs a new model, here are a couple of modifications I hope they’ll incorporate. (Note that some of these thoughts came from a thread on Raw Food Talk — feel free to register and join in!)
- Move the controls to the front face of the machine, just to the right of the door. This would not only make it easier to read and reach the controls, it would also make it possible to free up counter space by keeping the dehydrator on an open shelf, either below counter level, sort of like an oven, or on a wall, like a microwave. I assume the newly positioned controls would need to be digital, to avoid awkward mechanical linkages. (Thanks, T-Bird!)
- Create a storage space under the dehydrator by raising it a few inches on legs. This would provide convenient storage for ParaFlexx sheets and extra trays, as well as a convenient place to set that removable door while loading / unloading the machine. If the “legs” were actually a low frame that the dehydrator itself could sit on, people who already own an Excalibur could get one, and people who would prefer the new model without the extra space wouldn’t have to get it. (Thanks, Mary Kay and DebB!)
- Offer semi-rigid polypropylene sheets as an alternative to either of the flexible ParaFlexx sheets. This would get around all of the problems mentioned in Non-stick Sheets and Handling Little Things, above. I’d buy nine of them in a minute!
That’s all I can think of to say. If you have questions that I haven’t answered, please let me know! And likewise if you would like to point out something that I have overlooked.
Carol the Dabbler 