Food Dehydrators: New Fad?

Food Dehydrators: New Fad?

Everything old is new again!
As I read this recent Slate article, I found myself feeling equal parts fascinated and perplexed. Has the fine art of the food dehydrator come so far in recent years? I had no idea it had gone upscale. But I was quietly satisfied when the article's author, Sara Dickerman, admitted how many of her experiments had gone wrong.

 
To most of us, the food dehydrator is one of those strange early "as seen on TV" fads from the late 1970s. My memories of food dehydrators are inextricably tied up with my recollection of that thing where you could buy a set of screens for making your own sprouts. Each plastic screen was a different gauge (and brilliant kindergarten color). You started out by draining and rinsing at the finest gauge, and by the time you worked your way up to the heaviest gauge, your fresh mung bean sprouts were ready.
 
(Ready to be piled atop the sandwich of your child, who would no doubt make a terrible face at the very thought. Or tucked into a pita sandwich. People were big on pita bread back then. Also, carob.)
 
My own experience with food dehydrators is two-fold. First, my mother bought one when I was a kid. Filled with the promise of being able to shave literally nickels off our monthly grocery bill by making her own banana chips from scratch. 
 
She filled it with grapes, the grapes collapsed overnight into a big wet alcoholic-smelling pile of fuzzy white mold, and she sold the food dehydrator at a garage sale about two weeks later. End of story.
 
Second, I bought a food dehydrator at a thrift store in the mid 90s. Mostly because I was bored, and needed a hobby. I also had discovered a latent love of sun-dried tomatoes, so I set to work dehydrating my own. I spent the better part of a weekend processing tomatoes. Delicious, so delicious!
 
I put them into jars and displayed them proudly on my tiny kitchen counter. Then some friends came over the next day and pointed out that if I hadn't canned them properly (which I hadn't) they would give me botulism and I would die (which was lurid, but probably true).
 
Now I learn that the molecular gastronomists and other such cutting-edge culinary artists are making crazy-ass stuff like "onion glass" and "carrot tuiles." I'm tempted to give it another shot, but I'm pretty sure I would somehow just end up with a gloppy mess of moldy grapes (or worse, botulism).