How to Dehydrate in An Air Fryer

Air fryers are highly versatile kitchen appliances that everyone and their grandmas love. The greatest thing about air fryers, apart from not needing to add oil to crisp up your food, is that they can be used to dehydrate vegetables and meat. So, how exactly do you dehydrate in an air fryer?

If your air fryer has a dehydrating mode, turn it on and let it run until the timer expires. For air fryers without this mode, you need to turn the air fryer on to 150 to 175°F and bake your food for 3 to 7 hours.

In this guide, I’ll describe what dehydrating is, how to use your air fryer to dehydrate food, and whether or not an air fryer stands up to a standalone food dehydrator.

What is Dehydrating Food?

Dehydrating food simply means removing the moisture content from food items. If you’ve eaten banana chips or beef jerky or made instant soup from a powder, you’ve handled dehydrated food before.

Benefits of Dehydrating Food

1. Extend the shelf life of perishable food

Ancient cultures used to dehydrate food to prevent spoilage. Travelers would take dried fruits and meats with them on long journeys when cooking or storing food was unfeasible. Today, we dehydrate food for the same exact purpose. So, if you want to save money on buying meat and fruit in bulk, just remove the moisture content and store them for future use.

2. Less time-consuming compared to canning and pickling

Other common methods for preserving perishable food items are canning and pickling. While they can be just as effective as preventing spoilage, there are several more steps involved than there are in dehydrating.

3. Less kitchen clutter

Not only do you not have to worry about spoiled food, but you can also free up some fridge and freezer space by dehydrating your food. Dehydrated food can be stored in cabinets, pantries, and even basements (as long as you keep them in an airtight container).

Can You Dehydrate Food in an Air Fryer?

If you hopped on the air fryer bandwagon on picked one up for your kitchen, I have excellent news for you: you can use your air fryer to dehydrate food and reap the benefits of dried ingredients!

An air fryer works similarly to a convection oven, which you can also use to dehydrate food. Inside an air fryer is a heating coil that heats up the air inside the food basket, while a fan circulates the heated air to cook your food from all directions evenly. Best of all, air fryers come with perforated baskets and pans that allow heated air to cook your food from below, too!

Traditional methods of dehydrating food require air and heat—2 things that an air fryer uses to cook food. However, you should be careful how you use your air fryer to dehydrate. There’s a pretty fine line between removing the moisture from your food and cooking it to completion.

How to Dehydrate in an Air Fryer

Here, I’ll describe how to dehydrate in an air fryer, with or without a dehydrating mode.

Dehydrating Mode

Many high-end air fryers will come with multiple cooking presets, such as air-frying, roasting, baking, broiling, and dehydrating. Using the dehydrating function is pretty straightforward—simply press the dehydrating button on the air fryer’s control board, let it come up to temperature, and place your food in the basket. Make sure the food is in a single layer with as little overlap or touching as possible. That way, moisture won’t leak from one to another.

The cooking temperature inside an air fryer set to dehydrating mode varies from model to model. Usually, the temperature will be below 200°F, and it will have a preset cooking duration of between 3 and 7 hours.

Without Dehydrating Mode

Entry-level and mid-range air fryers will have a limited number of cooking presets, if at all. In such models, you will have to manually adjust the cooking temperature and time by turning dials or pressing buttons.

To dehydrate food in an air fryer without a dehydrating preset, set the temperature of the air fryer to around 175°F and let it preheat for 30 minutes. When the air fryer has reached such temperature, swiftly but carefully remove the food basket, place your food inside the basket in a single layer, then place the basket back in the air fryer’s base. Let it cook for between 3 and 7 hours.

Air fryers will automatically shut off when the cooking time has expired or if the appliance is at risk of heat failure. So, you should check on the progress of your food every 2 hours or so to see whether or not you have to increase or decrease the cooking time.

Dehydrating Instructions for Certain Ingredients

There are certain variables that come into play when determining the cooking time in an air fryer, such as the size of your food and how much moisture it originally contained. For instance, dehydrating a slab of meat may take upwards of 6 hours to complete, but a single strawberry won’t take nearly as long.

Below, I’ll explain the cooking time and temperature for dehydrating certain food items in an air fryer, as well as what you can do with them.