Reviews for Avantco CFD10 Ten Tray Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator with Removable Door - 120V, 1000W

I ordered this unit after researching other brands of "commercial" dehydrators. I had visited to webstrauantstore.com to look at dehydrators and the site 'suggested' this model as an alternative to the one I was looking at. It was significantly more affordable, so I ordered the Avantco CFD10 dehydrator and have used it almost non-stop since it arrived. In short - a great dehydrator. The unit arrived on-time and in perfect condition. There was minimal assembly required - basically unpacking the unit, positioning the shelf supports and then sliding on the front door. Nice features - the door removes completely from the unit by sliding it up and pulling out - this allows it to be placed out of the way for loading, unloading and cleaning. The shelves are stainless wire racks with about 1/2 inch grid - a good size for all but the smallest Read More

I love this product! I have many, many friends who dehydrate. They all boast on their Excaliber dehydrators. I tell them that they missed the boat. Excaliber is so expensive and this Avantco dehydrator is so affordable and yet has 10 racks, a very simple door that is easy to open and close and temperature control high enough to dehydrate meats! Once I fell in love with this product, I bought a stainless cart for it and the combination is perfect for my in-home use. I have dehydrated tomato skins for making tomato powder, bananas, bananas ,bananas, herbs, celery, and peppers. I also use it as a proofing box, and have used it to set my ferments on and around to keep them at a warm and constant temp. All worked well. It is easy to clean. The racks are easily removable. The fan is quiet and the unit doesn't get too hot. I recommend this dehydrating unit to many people. It is comparable to Excaliber in function, and much less expensive.

It looks professional but it's very VERY slow in dehydration compared to much cheaper consumer models (It's two hours slower to do the same job than a consumer model I also own). It's also UNEVEN in dehydrating- the bottom taking a 25% longer than the top to dry the same thing which causes major consistency issues. The front cover aka "door" is awkward and not particularly well thought out. A lot of heat probably escapes using this design which likely contributes to the slow dehydration. I thought it would be much better than it is but if you're not in a hurry and not using it to produce fast repeatable product then it's probably fine.

We purchased this dehydrator to take the place of 3 non-commercial units. We're constantly dehydrating fruits & veggies for storage on a year-round basis. This unit is incredibly quiet with tons of space and very easy to clean. Another unexpected bonus: It actually puts out far less ambient heat than other dehydrators we've had in the past. While it is very warm to the touch, it is not so hot as to burn. Having feet keeps it off the countertop as well. We were also specifically looking for 'non-digital' controls, as they tend to wear out much too fast. The temp and timer dials on this model were perfect. The grid size in the racks themselves proved to be too large for many of our needs... we dry a lot of herbs, berries and smaller diced veggies. We made screens for our trays using stainless window screen found at a hardware store. Read More

I love the avantco stainless steel dehydrators (#177CFD10) . WORKS AWESOME. and easy to clean I use it for jerky mainly but have dehydrated hot peppers too. No complaints. Very impressed.

These dehydrators are fabulous! They are much quieter than my old Excalibur, and there is a lot of space in between each shelf for anything large (like bunches of herbs). Because the wires on the shelves are fairly far apart, I simply purchased some window screen at my local hardware store and cut it to size for each shelf (14"x16"). I ordered two for the busy apple season and am looking forward to using them for the rest of the year.

I ordered this unit about a month ago. I have already ran 135lbs of jerky through it and it has performed flawlessly. It dries at an almost perfect even rate. You might have to take a tray out and rotate it, but that is no problem at all. It is the best dehydrator i have ever used and the price places it at second to none for its size. The only thing wish could be changed is--- it was twice the size, even if it was twice the price. It would still be hands down best.

This dehydrator has a lot of room inside, is very quiet and very easy to clean, but does not dehydrate food very fast. I have been doing apples for over a week and the Avantco takes twice as lone as my excalibur 600 watt dehydrator 9 tray. The fan seems to produce very little air movement and the 1000 watt heating element seems to cycle very often. It does ok on very small loads but when full loaded it is very slow. I love many of its features but it just does not dehydrate the food very fast.

We were excited to use this 10 rack dehydrator. Put our first batch in on one tray and ran it for a few hours at the highest selling of 160°F. I checked the internal temperature using two different thermometers and they both read 140°. I tried again by adjusting the temperature to 140° on the thermostat, and sure enough; the thermometers read 129°F. I am hoping this is a rare fluke. But I wanted to leave an honest review of what I ran into. I plan to contact customer service about how to replace it, otherwise I love how simple it is.

I purchased 2 of these 1 of them works great but the other one not so great it don't get as hot as the other one and takes it twice as long to finish product. happy with 1 of them not with the other one.

The best low cost option to dehydrate food. It's so silent and easy to use. The food gets a perfect finish, so delicious Recommended 100%

We do a lot of organic preserving and found this to be a good piece of equipment for making fruit leathers and jerky. Would buy another in near future.

This dehydrator is pretty heavy duty for the price, works efficiently and maintains a steady temperature throughout use time. We've used to dehydrate fruits and herbs.

This stainless steel food dehydrator is everything we were looking for. It heats up fast and is easy to clean. The ten racks allows us to dehydrate multiple items at once. This dehydrator is a must have!

I bought a dehydrator on another website for personal use. I didn't last long. So. Webstruant sells one for less and it's commercial. It made me beef jerky way better. It was consistent on every rack. If you love beef jerky, this is a must have.

I love this dehydrator so much I purchased two :) We sometimes run these 24/7 for weeks at a time. They hold up great and really get done what we need.

What an amazing product. Small and versatile! We were Surprised at the amount of product you can get in this little dehydrator. Even better, the 1st time we used it we left it on our kitchen counter. It does not throw off a lot of heat like the others do. Definitely worth the investment.

This unit does an ok job dehydrating jerky in our small shop. It's easy to use and cleaning is straightforward. The problem we ran into is that there is no drip tray included with the unit. If it is placed on a level surface, jerky marinade runs out of the front and creates a mess on the table or floor. I've contacted customer service and their solution was to dab the jerky with a paper towel or otherwise dry the meat. I thought that's what the dehydrator was for. Anyway, at this price point we will probably keep it as a back up, but I would not buy it again.

This unit gets the work done. Very quiet, lots of shelf space. Does a beautiful ob on jerky and the stainless grates are easy to clean.

Good value. Basic dehydrator. Easy set up. Slow operation. Does the job. It is price discordantly. The trays are not ideal for flat results but works.

This is a great value and the perfect first for my jerky making needs after hunting season ends. It is nice that this dehydrator will heat to 160, so it is safer on the ground meat jerky I like to make. With a quick initial setup, I had the machine ready to use within an hour of unpacking. The only recommendation I have is to buy some sheets or screens if you plan to make ground meat jerky as the racks have wide spacing on them. Otherwise, I have no complaints about this and expect to get a long life out of it!

I cannot stress enough how wonderful this little gem is, especially how quiet the motor runs, even for a home kitchen. Would highly recommend this steal of a deal!!!

Works great, easy to clean and is quiet as a whisper!

Industrial but for home use. Gets lots of usage and is fantastic so far. Really quiet machine and efficient. Would recommend.

I am very happy with the dehydrator. The wraps I make turn out perfect. I bought a separate stainless steel stand. I would recommend this dehydrator.

Great tool for the price. Does take days and days to dehydrate something and you have to keep your on the switch daily to make sure it is on, it does time out.

It doesnt last long! First of all it didnt come with a fan blade so i needed to order one ya would think webstaurant would send for free but no i needed to pay for blade and shipping. Used it a couple dozen times and the timer switch broke. You would think it would be easy to repalce but unfortunalty the cover plate is riveted in from the top. there are 2 screws on the back i think just for show the do nothing to help remove cover plate. the dials are also glued on. AVANTCO is a cheap brand ya get what you pay for.

This "commercial" unit worked great for 18 months. It no longer heats up. These machines shouldn't be disposable. BE SURE TO GET THE EXTENDED WARRANTY.

I bought this instead of a Cabela brand I was looking at and have been very pleased. It is for home use. I use it for deer jerky and fruit snacks mostly and really appreciate not having to rotate the trays like I did with the round dehydrator I had before where all the heat came up from the bottom. Clean up is a lot easier too but I do use the drying sheets. They are a must for smaller items like berries and especially when making jerky from ground meat as it would fall through the wire racks. All in all I have been very pleased with the machine.

worked fine until after ~20 batches it stopped working. The timer, fan, and heat coil stopped working, I assume it is a timer switch problem or power supply problem. I checked all the wiring for loose connections which didn't change anything.

Pretty quiet. Good size for use on a counter. There is rattle (it is a steel box with a fan spinner), but you can mitigate it by pulling on the feet to create a bit of tension in the unit. its not insulated, but the sides do not get very hot. You will want to use dryer mesh for smaller items as the racks have holes that are just under 1". All this and a great price. A perfect addition to our equipment inventory.

I received this unit last week, and I think I got a lot for the money, especially when comparable units can go for a lot more money. It was easy to assemble, ready to use from the box in about 10 minutes-- including recommended run-in time. The results I have obtained drying sliced tomatoes are very satisfying, and so with the peppers I've dried, with one caveat: the mesh size of the racks is about 3/4", so the CFD10 is simply incompatible with small foods like tabasco peppers out of the box. I have three small-mesh cooling racks that happen to fit inside, but you may not be so lucky. You WILL have to purchase small-mesh screens to overlay these racks to dry smaller foods, and that's why I gave it four out of five stars. Nowhere in the product listing is the rack mesh size mentioned. It should be.

I ordered this for my chocolate store since I wanted to dehydrate my own fruits.I love the fact that I can pack a whole lot of fruits in it.But some of the stuff I like Mexican mangoes,took almost 3 days to fully dry which I felt was ridiculous!But the other small fruit like strawberries dried in the required time.Not fully impressed with how fast it dries stuff but it’s a decent machine. It’s very easy to clean,sturdy and very easy to assemble.

We have had the Avantco Dehydrator for over a week now and it works impressively well for our function. The heating element is very large so it manages to dehydrate all but the very top and very bottom rack very evenly. We load right at ten pounds of jerky in it at a time and about and hour and a half in rotate them front to back a single time and this had worked excellent so far. Compared to our others this one is the best. We plan on ordering about three more of them in the near future

This Food Dehydrator is perfect for dehydrating meringue, fruit garnishes, and anything else that you may need to dehydrate. The stainless steel finish makes it easy to clean and looks great in any commercial kitchen!

This dehydrator has more than paid for itself in one season. We have dried everything from corn and blueberries to zucchini and pears, and it was running the entire time our garden was producing. Combined with a vacuum sealer from Webstaurant, lots of extra bags, and oxygen absorbing packs, it allowed us to enjoy our garden all winter long.

The Avantco CFD10 Ten Rack Stainless Steel Food Dehydrator with Removable Door - 1000W is a great option for drying mushrooms, herbs and fruits for storage and selling at farmer's markets.

Love this dehydrator, i use it to make my own jerky, started out using it for mostly beef products but then graduated to fruit and even salmon.

This is an excellent dehydrator. I have used this for a variety of meats, produce and herbs. Every time I use this I am greatly pleased with the results. Small enough to fit underneath a worktable yet spacious enough inside to fit a large amount of food.

Great product. Large enough to keep up with demand for our operations. Easy to access to put in and remove product. Easy to clean. Very happy