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(97 votes) Published: Oct 01, 2007 1:41 p.m. In 10 Favorites Lists Viewed 1010 times
In this Egg, I will show you how to make a homemade dehydrator for around $15 (compare that to commercial dehydrators).
First, you will need a box with some tape covering up the sides and/or the bottom corners (to prevent too much heat loss)
A knife, or anything to cut with
Heavy duty tape (I used packing because I didn’t have duct tape)
A light socket with a one hundred watt lightbulb with a power cord attached (I used an old extension cord). Make sure to wrap up the bottom of the light socket with electrical tape so you dont get shocked.
Items needed that are not shown:
Wire cutters or tin snips
1 yard of 1/4 inch galvanized steel mesh (make sure it is galvanized)
Aluminum foil
Lets get started. Make a cardboard square small enough to fit inside the box going about a 25% up the side of the box and wrap it with aluminum foil.
Cut a hole in the middle of the box
Pull the power cord through the the hole and tape the light fixture in place to prevent it from moving.
Cover the bottom with aluminum foil.
Here is the fun part. Make a tray with the the steel mesh to put whatever you are drying on. Make it small enough to fit in the box, but big enough to fit on top of the little cardboard square you made earlier.
Plug it in and you are ready to go. Some things I would like to mention is not to dry anything acidic with this dehydrator because the acids melt away the galvanized part of the steel. I made a batch of beef jerky with this dehydrator and it took about 6 hours to dry. It was well worth the wait though. Thanks to author Kurt Saxon for the idea to make this egg.
Thank you for reading this egg and I hope you find it interesting. If you have any questions, problems, or if you want to give some feedback, please feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.
Oct 01, 2007 2:54 pm - another thing to add is just in case you didn’t know, when you are putting whatever you want to dry like beef on the rack, dont put the meat on the tray directly over the light bulb because the juices will get all over the lightbulb.
O t 01, 2007 3:56 pm - I used raw meat for my jerky and it came out perfect. As for weed, I knew someone would ask me that, I dont know. you would have to try it out. Try experimenting with it a little bit and see what you can do..
Nice egg! Perhaps you could change the design to allow the lightbulb to hang from the top so that if you want to do jerkey the juices won’t get on the bulb and cause a short or fire. Otherwise, nice tutorial! I’m definitely trying this soon.
if u grow weed and want it to dry faster could u use this????
No, DON’T use this to dry weed! THC degrades rapidly in light, never ever dry your bud in light, let alone a 100w bulb!!! You will end up with really shitty weed.
Nice egg! Perhaps you could change the design to allow the lightbulb to hang from the top so that if you want to do jerkey the juices won’t get on the bulb and cause a short or fire. Otherwise, nice tutorial! I’m definitely trying this soon.
arrange the jerky on the tray so that none of the pieces are directly over the light bulb.
Oct 02, 2007 1:47 pm - Just wanted to let errbody know I tried this and it was great. Mine was a little too cooked because I used a 120 Watt bulb and left it overnight but it was still good... also I started with cooked meat so next time ill use raw.
Oct 02, 2007 4:23 pm - The jerky is placed in raw not cooked, you can add spices such as black pepper in it if you want. Great Egg 5*s. I going to read up on this Kurt Saxon guy.
Oct 03, 2007 5:23 pm - yeah, the lightbulb gets plenty hot. I have done a couple jerky runs so far, and so far they both came out great. I did over marinate one batch and it became a little salty, but it was still awesome.
Oct 06, 2007 3:16 pm - 3*, cuz of the pics and good explanation. But, it isnt really a dehydrator, its a fire-dangerous Dry Box for herbs or other stuff. A dehydrator takes out ALL Moisiture. Your crap just dries stuff.
MUCH BETTER: Put your stuff into an oven and put it on 200°C, wait and youl be suprises that this has the same or even better effect without making a crappy box.
AND you can easyly clean it! (think about all those stuff, dryed into the Aluminium foil, baa. (Not really somthing where you want to eat/smoke or sumthing else from!)
Oct 07, 2007 8:00 am - dude, that is why you change the aluminum foil every now and then. Its not that much of a fire danger if you put electrical tape on the bottom of the light fixture and have proper ventilation. I have used a commercial dehydrator before and I find that this works a lot better and is cheap and efficient.
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