These Are The Best Food Dehydrators For Making Homemade Snacks From Jerky To Dried Fruit

Whether you’re looking to be a hero on your next road trip or make more exciting snacks when you’re stuck working at your desk, a food dehydrator offers you the chance to explore new types of jerky and dried fruit.

If your experience with dehydrated foods starts and ends with the dried cranberries you add to your apple salad, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We consulted the Good Housekeeping Institute and Nicole Papantoniou, director of their Kitchen Appliances & Culinary Innovation Lab, to delve into the world of food dehydrators and why you might want to consider purchasing one to sit alongside your air fryer.

“While you can dehydrate in an oven or air fryer, the advantage of a standalone model is that it works at a much lower temperature and usually has more shelves than an oven or air fryer,” says Papantoniou.

From high-powered, professional machines to dehydrators with collapsible shelves for easy storage, we found models to fit every size kitchen and type of snacker (we see you, beef jerky fans). Read on to find out what to which buy.

Our top picks

How we picked these products

We’ve got plenty of options for you to chew on. To find the best food dehydrators, we talked to our friends at the Good Housekeeping Institute. Their team of on-staff experts—which includes all types: engineers! data analysts! registered dietitians!—rigorously put everyday products to the test (and then more and more tests) in their New York City-based labs to determine which ones you can trust. They evaluated the food dehydrators by drying apples, parsley, and beef jerky. They compared the models on a variety of factors, including performance, ease of use, noise levels, features, included accessories, and how easy it was to clean the trays and machine.