I decided to try out my new Cabela's dehydrator today. It appears to be having a bit of a challenge getting up to temp of 160° in my 48° garage. Best it is doing is 125°. Good thing I followed the instructions of a method from a new book I bought (The Spicy Dehydrator Cookbook by the guy that runs the Chili Pepper Madness blog) and put them in the oven first. The meat appeared to be cooked fully when pulled out of the oven before going into the dehydrator.
Rubbed the meat in a different rub by sort of dry dredging it in a bowl. Here is the bacon. I did 1/2# in Cabela's pecan honey rub and the other 1/2# in Cabela's maple jalapeno rub. I really like both of those rubs on ribs so I figured I would try it on bacon. I then put in the oven on 170° for 30 minutes before they waited to go into the dehydrator with the other meats.
Ready and waiting on the dehydrator rack. I bought more of the inexpensive "frog mats" on ebay from China. I cut off 1 3/4" from the end of the mat and it fits perfect into these dehydrator racks.
Cut a boneless pork loin into strips and did the same dry drudging process with Cabela's Maple Bacon Chipotle rub. I had previously cut 3 roughly 1.5" chops that were used (approximately 1#). I then put them in the other oven for 10 minutes at 350°. Here they are on the dehydrator rack ready to go in.
Lastly, 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into slices (approximately 1.5#-2.0#), dry drudged with a mixture of Frank's Red Hot seasoning, blue cheese powder, hickory smoke powder, and charcoal seasoning for about 2/3 of the strips and cinnamon chipotle rub for the remainder. These were also put in the oven for 10 minutes at 350° before getting ready to go in the dehydrator.
Only needed 4 of the 12 racks for this cook.
More to come later this afternoon. Will see if I need to finish in the oven or not.
