A dehydrator can technically dry almost anything with water in it, which makes “what should I actually dehydrate” a more useful question than “what can I dehydrate.” This is a category-by-category starting point, with links to the specific guides for anything you want to dig into further.
Fruit
Fruit is the most forgiving and rewarding place to start — minimal prep for most varieties, and a result that’s often better than store-bought. Apples, bananas, and peaches are the easiest entry points; for the full ranked breakdown by effort and result, see our best fruits to dehydrate guide.
Vegetables
Vegetables are a close second in usefulness, particularly for anyone who cooks regularly — dried onions, tomatoes, and hash browns turn into genuinely convenient pantry staples rather than novelty snacks. Most vegetables benefit from a quick blanch first; peppers, onions, garlic, and mushrooms are the main exceptions that go straight from cutting board to tray.
Meat and Poultry
Meat is the category with the highest payoff for backpackers and campers, but also the one where the details matter most for safety — poultry and red meat both need to be pre-heated to a safe internal temperature before drying, not just dried at a high dehydrator setting. See our meat safety guide before starting any meat project, whether it’s jerky, ground beef crumbles, or chicken for meals.
Dairy and Pantry Staples
This is the category with the most surprises — marshmallows, sourdough starter, and honey powder all fall here, alongside more traditional pantry projects like powdered eggs and milk. Shelf life varies dramatically within this group specifically because of fat and moisture content: sourdough starter and honey powder can last years, while yogurt drops and cheese are measured in weeks unless carefully sealed.
If you want an easy win to build confidence with a new dehydrator, start with fruit. If you’re prepping for a backpacking trip, start with vegetables and lean meat. If you just want to have fun with the machine, marshmallows and honey powder are genuinely entertaining low-stakes projects.
Novelty and Fun Projects
Not everything worth dehydrating is about food preservation. Dehydrated marshmallows, honey crisps, and pickle chips exist mostly because they’re fun, cheap, and produce a genuinely different snack than what you started with — a good category to explore once you’ve got the basics down and want to experiment rather than optimize for shelf life or nutrition. None of these require special equipment beyond what you already own for everyday drying.
What Rarely Justifies the Effort
A few categories consistently underperform relative to the time they cost: very high-water-content produce like cucumber or lettuce takes a long time to dry into something with limited practical use, high-fat foods like whole butter don’t dehydrate in any meaningful sense (see our honest look at dehydrated butter powder), and foods already sold in a stable, inexpensive dried form — like standard white rice — offer little benefit from drying something that’s already shelf-stable.
Timing Your Projects Around What’s in Season
Beyond the categories themselves, when you dehydrate matters almost as much as what. Buying a fruit or vegetable at peak season, when it’s cheapest and most flavorful, gives a noticeably better dried result than working with an out-of-season, less flavorful version of the same food — the concentration effect of drying means whatever quality goes in comes through even more strongly once the water’s gone. A bland winter tomato dries into a bland dried tomato; a ripe summer one dries into something worth the effort. Farmers markets and end-of-season sales at the grocery store are both good places to stock up specifically for a drying project.
Frequently Asked Questions
Apples. Minimal prep, forgiving timing, and a result that’s hard to get wrong, which makes them the best way to learn your specific dehydrator’s quirks before moving on to trickier projects.
Whole butter and other very high-fat foods are the clearest example — they don’t dehydrate the way water-based foods do, since fat, not water, is most of what’s left after drying. A few other foods, like eggs, carry enough food-safety nuance that they’re worth researching thoroughly before attempting.
Fruit is the most forgiving starting point for building confidence with your machine. Vegetables and meat both carry more preparation steps (blanching, pre-cooking) that are easier to get right once you’re already comfortable with the basic process.
Both are reasonable approaches. Using surplus produce you already have is the most cost-effective, but buying fruit or vegetables at their seasonal peak specifically for drying often gives a noticeably better result than working with whatever happens to be in the fridge.
Smaller, thinner pieces dry faster and more evenly across nearly every category, while whole or larger pieces take longer but sometimes preserve a texture or presentation that matters for a specific use, like whole dried figs versus quartered ones.
