Inside the Little Plastic Castle

I need lots of salt in my diet too, including potassium salt, so I'll probably increase the total salts! ;) The salt also helps preserve it.

I don't make it every week, but I've been making it for a long time. The Alton Brown approach with a new furnace filter and big box fan works, but you have to buy a new filter often enough that I found getting a used dehydrator was a better option. It's a Magic Aire II. It's now called L'Equip 528 Food Dehydrator. I keep mine in the basement when I'm not using it. I modified it with a switch so I can turn on or off the heating option.

In terms of difference in results, mostly I have confidence that the item is fully dried out and won't go mouldy in a sealed plastic bag when i carry it around in my backpack. It finishes relatively quickly, but that depends on how thickly I slice my product, plus I tend to use beef a lot that I find takes longer to dry out than turkey/tofu. It's also a lot less heat producing than the oven, which is a blessing in my (un-airconditioned) summers. It takes about 6-10 hours in total, so I tend to run it overnight.