Hamilton Beach 32100A Digital Food Dehydrator Review

Hamil­ton Beach 32100A Dig­i­tal Food Dehy­dra­tor: There are many user-friend­ly food dehy­dra­tors in the mar­ket today that can help any dry­ing enthu­si­ast make preser­v­a­tive-free food­stuff. Hamil­ton Beach 32100A food dehy­dra­tor is among the com­mon food dry­ers you will encounter in the dry­ers market.

This dehy­dra­tor mod­el is made by Hamil­ton Beach Com­pa­ny, which invests in the man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of kitchen appli­ances. Many house­holds in Amer­i­ca, Mex­i­co, and Cana­da have small kitchen devices from this Com­pa­ny. The Hamil­ton 32100A dehy­dra­tor has var­i­ous fea­tures that would enable you to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it from oth­er dry­er brands. These fea­tures include five dry­ing trays that give con­sid­er­able dry­ing space.

It also comes with a dig­i­tal ther­mo­stat, a wide tem­per­a­ture range, and a timer. Besides, it comes with a sol­id sheet to make fruit rolls and a mesh sheet that accom­mo­dates small food ingre­di­ents. Also, the mod­el is known to be light­weight and has an easy-to-use con­trol pan­el. Here, we will go deep­er into these and oth­er fea­tures to enable you to decide whether this dry­er is suit­able for your kitchen dehy­drat­ing activities.

Will you be inter­est­ed in an alter­na­tive option? Check our arti­cle — 7 Best Food Dehy­dra­tors for Healthy Kitchen.

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Vertical Technology

Infor­ma­tion about the device’s air­flow design is essen­tial since it deter­mines the effi­cien­cy of dehy­dra­tion of var­i­ous food­stuffs. This dry­er mod­el has a ver­ti­cal air­flow design that incor­po­rates a fan that rotates to push hot air ver­ti­cal­ly through­out the trays con­tain­ing the food ingre­di­ents. Here, the fan need not work very hard because the hot air will nat­u­ral­ly rise. Both the fan and heat­ing ele­ments work togeth­er to ensure there is con­tin­u­ous air­flow through­out this unit. The con­tin­u­ous air­flow main­tains the uni­form tem­per­a­ture in the unit and improves the effi­cien­cy of dry­ing and even dehy­dra­tion of dif­fer­ent food items.

Addi­tion­al­ly, this mod­el’s con­tin­u­ous air­flow elim­i­nates fre­quent tray rota­tion, which might be time-con­sum­ing, espe­cial­ly if the user has oth­er duties to per­form. This air­flow sys­tem’s effi­cien­cy is fur­ther improved by the pres­ence of a ven­ti­la­tion mesh, which enhances the escap­ing of mois­ture. Effi­cient elim­i­na­tion of mois­ture in food pro­tects your favorite food items from some harm­ful micro-organ­isms that might cause spoilage. How­ev­er, a few users have raised some com­plaints regard­ing incon­sis­tent heat flow, and there­fore you can opt to keep an eye on your dehy­drat­ing batch­es. Depend­ing on the spe­cif­ic food items’ dry­ing peri­od, you can car­ry out such super­vi­sion sev­er­al times.

Exterior Design and Wattage

Gen­er­al­ly, food dehy­dra­tors tend to con­sume less elec­tri­cal pow­er than most con­vec­tion ovens and are there­fore pre­ferred for dehy­dra­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, the Hamil­ton Beach 32100A dehy­dra­tor runs at 500-watt of pow­er. This wattage sup­plies suf­fi­cient ener­gy to the heat­ing ele­ments and the fan motor to enable prop­er dry­ing of a vari­ety of veg­eta­bles, fruits, and oth­er food items that require high tem­per­a­tures like beef jerky. In addi­tion, the five trays capac­i­ty where the food ingre­di­ents are kept match­es the 500 watts of pow­er with no over-dry­ing cas­es. Fur­ther­more, this pow­er is not less to put your food at risk of improp­er dehy­dra­tion, result­ing in molds and bac­te­ria growth.

Trays

The capac­i­ty of a par­tic­u­lar dehy­dra­tor is a major fac­tor to con­sid­er when choos­ing a suit­able dry­er mod­el. One opts to pick a mod­el with a cer­tain capac­i­ty depend­ing on the pur­pose of dehy­dra­tion, which deter­mines the vol­ume of food items to be dried. This dry­er comes with five stack­able trays that pro­vide ade­quate dry­ing space, espe­cial­ly for house­hold con­sump­tion. Note that this device is not expand­able and, there­fore, can only han­dle a lim­it­ed amount of food ingre­di­ents. All the trays are made from BPA-free plas­tic mate­ri­als hence guar­an­tee­ing the user of con­t­a­m­i­nants-free food.

Notably, the ver­sa­til­i­ty of this dehy­dra­tor mod­el is fur­ther improved by an addi­tion­al fine mesh sheet that comes with this device. The avail­abil­i­ty of mesh sheets is ide­al for dry­ing small food items such as herbs, nuts, and seeds, with noth­ing falling through trays to the bot­tom of the unit. Also, a sol­id sheet plays a crit­i­cal role when­ev­er you need to pre­pare leather rolls using purees and jams. Both the mesh sheet and the sol­id sheet are food-safe hence; you need not wor­ry about your health. Besides, the bot­tom part of the unit is metal­lic- a fea­ture that gives this device sta­bil­i­ty when work­ing on kitchen countertops.

Hamil­ton Beach 32100A dehy­dra­tor weighs 8 lbs. and will not both­er you much when­ev­er you need to move it from one end to anoth­er. Addi­tion­al­ly, its dimen­sions are 11’’ by 10.5’’ by 13’’, mak­ing it suit­able for most kitchen coun­ter­tops even where space is lim­it­ed. You will not both­er your­self much when stor­ing it, espe­cial­ly when it’s not in use. For prop­er reg­u­la­tion of tem­per­a­ture with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly open­ing this unit, this dry­er mod­el comes with a clear lid. Here, it will be eas­i­er for you to check the dry­ing progress visu­al­ly. Dur­ing dehy­dra­tion, ensure that the lid is well-fitted.

Control Panel

To increase con­ve­nience when in use, the dehy­dra­tor fea­tures a con­trol pan­el that bears a num­ber of set­tings. Basi­cal­ly, this dehydrator’s dig­i­tal con­trol pan­el is locat­ed at the base of the unit. For instance, it has an adjustable ther­mo­stat to enable the user to apply the cor­rect tem­per­a­ture range when dry­ing diverse food ingre­di­ents. This dig­i­tal ther­mo­stat has a tem­per­a­ture rang­ing from 100ᵒF to 160ᵒF. Apply­ing a suit­able tem­per­a­ture for each, such tem­per­a­ture range will make you dehy­drate veg­eta­bles, fruits, herbs, nuts, fish, and even meat. There is also a timer and a Start/Pause button.

Like most dehy­dra­tors in the mar­ket today, the timer on the con­trol pan­el of this mod­el allows you to set the appro­pri­ate time for dehy­drat­ing cer­tain food items. A timer will always turn off the device auto­mat­i­cal­ly when the set time elaps­es. This ensures your food does not over-dehy­drate. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, this dry­er model’s timer pro­vides up to 48 hours of dry­ing time. It is imper­a­tive to use the instruc­tion man­u­al to get com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion about the accu­rate time to dry spe­cif­ic food items. That means you won’t fail to car­ry out oth­er house­hold chores dur­ing the entire dry­ing time.

Using and Cleaning

Since this mod­el’s con­trol sys­tem is intu­itive, there are not many issues through­out the dehy­dra­tion process as long as the user fol­lows the instruc­tion giv­en in the instruc­tion man­u­al. The device’s oper­a­tion is not demand­ing, and all you need is to pre­pare the food to be dehy­drat­ed before the actu­al process. Load the trays with the food ingre­di­ents and con­nect them to the pow­er sock­et. Accu­rate­ly set the timer and the tem­per­a­ture at which a par­tic­u­lar food­stuff dries. The man­u­fac­tur­er rec­om­mends that one should use the user’s man­u­al to know more about the dehy­drat­ing recipes.

Super­vi­sion of the entire dry­ing process is made sim­pler by pre­sent­ing a trans­par­ent top lid, where the user can observe the dry­ing process. The Hamil­ton Beach 32100A dehy­dra­tor will enable you to pre­pare almost every form of food­stuff. Think of banana chips, meat, veg­eta­bles, fruit rolls, lentils, herbs, mush­rooms, and oth­er food ingre­di­ents. With this device, you are no longer required to pur­chase pre­served food items from shop­ping malls. Food that requires thor­ough prepa­ra­tion before dry­ing should be con­sid­ered for con­sis­tent results. For instance, fruits and veg­eta­bles should be cut into suit­able shapes and sizes.

The clean­li­ness of food ingre­di­ents is also essen­tial to ensure that your fam­i­ly con­sumes hygien­ic food. On the oth­er hand, the clean­ing of the dry­er after use is also should be done. The plas­tic trays are easy to clean man­u­al­ly using warm, soapy water. Man­u­al clean­ing of the trays is most­ly done where there are hard stains that require more effort to clean up. How­ev­er, one can decide to clean the trays in a dish­wash­er. When clean­ing the base, use a soapy damp cloth.

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Summary

From this dehydrator’s fea­tures, we can term it a ver­sa­tile kitchen, to sum up, every­thing. Its five stack­able trays make it appro­pri­ate, espe­cial­ly for dry­ing food for domes­tic con­sump­tion. Those who need a light­weight and com­pat­i­ble food dry­er due to min­i­mal space can opt to pur­chase this mod­el. The user can also enjoy healthy food from this device since the mate­ri­als that make it up are food-safe.

BPA-free plas­tic mate­r­i­al is used to make up the trays. Addi­tion­al­ly, its con­tin­u­ous air­flow with­in the unit ensures effi­cient food dehy­dra­tion. The pres­ence of a timer on this dry­er is also an essen­tial fea­ture that most users con­sid­er, espe­cial­ly when one needs to leave the machine run­ning overnight. How­ev­er, you should know that the fan of the Hamil­ton Beach 32100A can be noisy. By hav­ing this food dehy­dra­tor’s fea­tures at hand, you may con­sid­er whether to make it your favorite kitchen appliance.

Will you be inter­est­ed in an alter­na­tive option? Check our arti­cle — 7 Best Food Dehy­dra­tor for Healthy Kitchen.