Brod & Taylor SAHARA Folding Food Dehydrator (Stainless Steel Shelves)

My husband gave me the Brod & Taylor Sahara Dehydrator for my birthday, and I’m very impressed with its design—particularly how it folds down for compact and convenient storage. I’ve used it once so far to make beef jerky, and it performed exceptionally well. It runs very quietly, and the rear-mounted fan provided even drying without the need to rotate or rearrange the trays. I really appreciate the glass doors, which allow me to easily monitor the items being dehydrated. The unit isn’t too tall, so it fits comfortably under my kitchen cabinets and sits nicely on the countertop. The digital display and control dial make setting the temperature and time simple and user-friendly. I had been watching this dehydrator for a while, and I was pleased to take advantage of a price drop during Prime Days.

This is an amazing dehydrator, I had it running at 135° for 8 hours, making miso salmon jerky, made my house smell like a fish market 😅 worth it! I want to persevere the shelves for as long as possible, so I put the fish on 1/4 sheet trays. Worked amazing. Really intuitive to open and unfold, thought I would need an engineering degree but it was really simple. The time and temp are easy to set. Not to loud, honestly not any louder than a running fridge, you get used to the noise and it's really clear when it shuts off, you notice the silence. Beeps 3 times when it's done. I've only had it for 3 days, if I think of it in a year I'll leave another review. Worth the money. 2 Week Update. I have one complaint, the knobs are tiny, hard to grip. I might buy wider ones if I get really motivated about it. But really, that's my only complaint. I've been running this dehydrator basically non stop for 2 weeks. I've made salmon, beef, and mushroom jerky. I plan to make venison jerky tomorrow. I've powdered lemons, limes, oranges, tomatoes, Sriracha, sardines, red miso, black garlic, and sweet peppers. I've made instant white and wild rice. And SOOOO much more. I'm really running it all the time, I think it's been off for 30 hours since I got it. 4 month update.....I used it as a pancake warmer today for Easter breakfast. I can only make 1 pancake at a time, so I set the dehydrator to 130° and kept the pancakes warm until they were all ready. First time we've all eaten pancakes at the same time. 😊 Multitasking product! Hey I remembered! 1 YEAR REVIEW. Buy it. Really. Buy it. I run it daily, I always have something in it. I’ve used it to proof bread, make yogurt, keep pancakes warm, powder food, jerky, dog treats, fruit roll ups, and tree ornaments(lime slice garland). Seriously, buy it. Still haven’t got motivated about changing the nobs, still on the list though. The plastic shelves are in great shape, no discoloration. I have run them through the dishwasher, but I usually just rinse them. They wipe clean so easily. I bought grill mats to use as dehydrator mats, much cheaper and I was able to cut them to the perfect size (take a lighter to the edges to clean them up). I was so afraid I would never use this, but I shocked my lazy self by using it more than anything else in my kitchen, buy it. I have folded it back up once, ONCE, it’s always in use. 4.5 years and it still lives on my counter top. Still haven’t changed out the nobs, just not that big a problem really. The shelves are in great shape, no warping, no discoloration. Still using the grill mats. Used it as a bread proofing box just the other day, I use it to warm plates while I make dinner when it’s really cold outside. I’ve stored the dehydrator away twice, it never stays hidden long. I’ve changed the filter on the back once. It’s a great piece of kit. Worth every penny!

Overall: I like the dehydrator and am glad I purchased this model over some of the other models I was considering, mainly due to the folding ability and currently having limited storage. While I have some complaints it works reliably well for multiple things I’ve tried, and has considerable capacity. It’s worth noting my other dehydrator before this was an “All-in-one” unit that started me looking for a dedicated unit, but I don’t have enough experience to compare this product to other similarly priced items. Temperature: See attached images. My testing method was placing my temperature probe in the empty unit on the middle rack, setting it to the specified temperature, giving it a few minutes to stabilize and then resetting the high/low values. Unfortunately I don’t have something that could log the temperature and give an average, but I would guess the temperature is ~2.5 F below the set temperature averaged over time. It’s also worth noting that the temperature will be more stable when food is in the dehydrator and brought up to temperature. Controls: The controls are easy to use and intuitive. Only has a few buttons, and the wheel to select the time/temperature is a nice touch. Temperature can be adjusted by 1F and time is in 15 minute increments. The functionality of dual temperature/times is a nice feature, but the user manual provides no guidance as to exact settings for different foods. Since a lot of dehydrators don’t have this functionality I couldn’t find much online either. I’ve tried it with apple chips to speed up the initial heat up, but without a test between 2 settings it’s hard to say how helpful it actually is as well as how much time it potentially saves. Usability: As stated in the ‘controls’ section the UI for temp/time selection is straight forward. Folding of the unit works well, it’s fairly straight forward and I don’t have any complaints. The knobs on the glass door feel a bit undersized in that they are a hard to grip, but I haven’t had any real problems with them. I assume their size is due to the fact that they have to fold into the unit so couldn’t be larger. The plastic tray at the bottom meant to catch drips from food in the unit works well, and is fairly easy to clean but I have a few complaints. The tray itself is a bit flimsy, and it feels like if you were letting it dry and let something kind of heavy against it you would have a risk of bending it. Additionally, it doesn’t actually cover the entire bottom of the dehydrator. This isn’t a huge deal to me, since you probably won’t put anything right on the edge anyway, but it is a bit inconvenient. I assume it is a limit of the folding design and storing it inside the unit when it is folded away. It would be nice if there was a light in the unit, but given how fast it comes back to temperature if you really need to look into it while it is being used opening the door and shining a flashlight in isn’t the end of the world. Food racks: I went with the stainless steel version. They fit just fine in the included carrying case, and the benefit is they work with the Brod & Taylor silicone ‘large’ style sheets (vs only ‘regular’ on the plastic trays) as well as whatever reservations you had about the plastic in the other version being gone (though most of the unit in the heating chamber is plastic anyway). Overall these are my biggest complaint about the unit. They work well for the dehydration process, but the metal running between the horizontal/vertical edges is very thin. This leaves me with 2 complaints: • The racks themselves feel flimsy, I haven’t noticeably bent them but it feels like you have to be careful with them way more than I would expect having to with metal racks. • They are difficult to clean. I’ve tried scrubbing them with a sponge after a few dehydration sessions and I’ve always noticed food built up where “connections” of metal meet. You really have to soak them or put them in the dishwasher to clean them adequately. Pricing: This kind of annoys me. The stainless steel shelves when I bought it as part of the unit cost another $100, but on their website they cost ~$90 and the plastic “Poly Shelves” cost ~$60. So, it would have been cheaper to buy the unit with the plastic shelves and then buy the Stainless Steel shelves separately from their website, and I would have had both sets of shelves. Accessories: (I didn’t consider this in my rating as you don’t get these items when purchasing the unit, but I wanted to put them here in case people were interested). I bought the carrying case and a few silicone sheets with the unit. The carrying case works well, it holds the unit and the bag with the food racks all in one. I also have the spare air filter and the user manuals with it as well. My biggest complaint with the setup is that it doesn’t have straps to secure the food trays in the case like it does for the main unit, not a huge deal but for the price I would have hoped for a better setup. It also doesn’t have any smaller outside pockets for auxillary items (air filters, user manuals) that I was hoping for. Overall it’s not bad, but for the price it wasn’t as good as I was hoping for. If you have the space to put the unit in a cabinet or something and not in a closet like I have I don’t necessarily think the case is worth it. The silicone sheets work well. They are a lot thinner than other silicone sheets you will find, I assume by design so they allow more heat transfer to the bottom of whatever food is on top of them. Makes them kind of a pain to clean,

Love this thing. Once you get it set up and torn down the first time it’s pretty easy to do. It held six pounds of top round beef with room to spare when making beef jerky. Tons of space, easy to use, doesn’t take up a whole lot of real estate on the counter when in use. I love this thing. Worth the money.

This is our third dehydrator. I didn't last long with a stacking round one, as I find those take a lot of manipulation (rearranging order of the trays in the stack for more even drying), the trays are small and have a central hole which makes fruit leathers difficult to make, pieces of food roll into the center, plus they tend to be inefficient. We moved on to a large, cabinet style dehydrator which was better able to keep up with the produce from our huge garden at the time. However, because of its size, it got relocated to the basement when we were no long able to keep a large garden. Fast forward many years and I was looking for a way to dry grain I had sprouted (germinated, really) for additional nutritional value and easier digestibility, plus was distressed by the amount of food wastage we have; but we have even less counter space available now than we had then, so the very old dehydrator wasn't the answer. I was thrilled to find this dehydrator because of its folding down to a size I could store in the kitchen (on top of the fridge), and the highly rated performance reported. It appears to be engineered to last a good long time. It's rarely been off since it came out of the box, and I haven't had occasion to fold it up and put it in its case (which appears very well made). The gaps (for instance between the doors) which a few people have complained about are a feature, not a bug, as the movement of the heated air over the food is part of what dehydrates it. (I've tried drying juniper berries in the desert, with plenty of heat, but little air flow, and it was a considerably lengthier process.) The controls, while not entirely intuitive, are easy to use. Though I'd prefer up and down buttons for temperature and time settings, the dials work quite well, and I appreciate that I can adjust the temperature by single degrees (on many modern dehydrators they jump from predetermined choice to predetermined choice – and often don't relate to those recommended by recognised food safety standards). The temperature, when checked while in actual use (i.e., with filled trays, which seem quite sturdy, and more than adequate to their use), has never been off by more than one degree at any placement of my remote thermometer. The trays, BTW, are quite sturdy, and definitely engineered to tolerances more than adequate to holding the weight of any foods placed on them without bowing. At the time I got the dehydrator, I also got the Brod and Taylor mesh mats to go over the metal trays, to keep small items from dropping through. They mostly do (though not for the grains), but I find the unfinished edges of the stiff plastic keep catching on my clothing, and shifting on the trays, causing food spillage. I have, however, learned that placing those stiff mesh sheets over kale, Swiss chard, and similar stiff and bulky greens, then pressing down on them, and leaving the stiff mesh covering over them, I can often fit trays of them in the dehydrator without leaving extra space between shelves. In preference to using them directly on top of the shelves, I got some 14 x 21 Inch (i.e., larger) silicone mesh mats, and cut them down using a rotary cutter run along a suitable straight edge, over a self-healing mat, using the measurements of the brand name mats (11 ½" x 17 ½"). The silicone mesh sheets generally stay put nicely, as do the items put on them, they don't snag, and the items placed on them seem to dehydrate just as fast. I also got a roll of silicone baking sheet to be cut to fit the trays, but learned before using it that it had fibreglass imbedded which could be hazardous, and examination under a magnifying glass confirmed that there were fiber ends sticking out of the cut edges, so that has been replaced with the Brod and Taylor silicone sheets, which aren't quite as large. Some frozen foods in particular have an annoying tendency to ski right off the edge of the silicone sheets, but arranging chopsticks around the perimeter can help keep them contained. The thin, rigid tray in the bottom of the dehydrator to catch any items which fall through or roll off has been working well, and it easy to clean. I have sprouted and dehydrated grain (for which it would be nice if the highest temperature were higher, but this seems to be the standard highest temp, and it does the job). All of the produce which was beginning to look as if it should be eaten soon or preserved was dehydrated (if not cooked) before it hit that point, as were the still good bags and boxes of vegetables from the freezer, which we can now get into a lot more easily. I've dehydrated fresh herbs from the windowsill and grocery store. We have mushrooms, mixed (previously frozen) vegetables, zucchini, spinach, onions, shallots, cabbage, daikon, ginger, turmeric, you name it, all ready to be rehydrated or cooked as is, or crushed or powdered for use. In addition to drying wheat which has been germinated, I've cooked rice in the rice cooker on the GABA setting to boost its nutrition, and dried it to use as instant rice (mixed 1:1 with hot water, and given 10-20 minutes to rehydrate). We're enjoying banana, apple, zucchini and beet chips, fresh herbs and spices, mixed vegetable and green powders, fruit leathers, and being easily able to use vegetables for which we only want small quantities at a time. It's become much easier to ensure that we're getting all the vegetables and fruit into our diet that we need. I feel that we're much better prepared for the winter. Best of all, I know that food is much less likely to go to waste, so with food costs up, what we spend on it will not be going to waste either; and I've started buying in bulk because I can manage larger quantities of food, even though it's just the two of us, and that's also a savings. This is already an excellent investment, which will just keep paying us back. However, as we've got a very nice backup supply of food established now, I need more shelves in the pantry. Thank you for reading my review. I hope you found it helpful.

I had some alignment issues on set-up which required a phone call to the manufacturer / distributer (TIP: get some old-school CS expert to train the CS staff and reorganize the outreach process. They think they are doing a good job, but ....) The alignment issue was simple, but no trouble-shooting data was available in the enclosed papers, and it took days of phone calls, messages and emails to get a response. Otherwise, this is a great product. It is much quieter than the two other dehydrators I have owned in the past. Also, more efficient (refer to the energy guide and schematics). I will be purchasing the steel trays to change out the plastic trays soon. I've used this unit on fruits and vegetables so far. I was attracted to and bought for the folding feature and portability as I collect plant and fungal specimens for study each fall. This unit can be stowed in the car and quickly set up in a motel or my colleague's campers when we are collecting and cataloging. It helps in the preservation of the specimen since some of the fruits (fungal) are delicate and would degrade too much with air drying. I am confident this unit will provide reliable in-home and field use for a long time.

This is a fantastic food dehydrator. With it's super simple operation, it's hard to mess things up.

Oooooh i live this thing. See those food prices going up? You ain't seen nothing yet. I've tried some food already to store away. I like strawberries, but when I buy in bulk I'm always upset when some begin to go bad because i didnt consume them in time. I hate wasting food even a little bit. This solves the problem. Nothing goes to waste. I just dry it. Now I have pineapple, strawberries, apples even beef jerky at the ready whenever I want in my pantry. What i love most about this is that I can fold it down and store it away. That was a problem in the past with other food dehydrators that were bulky and took up a lot of space.