Reference
Resources, references and standards
The knowledge base is a synthesis, not an original source. These are the guides, textbooks, journals, standards bodies and tools the material is drawn from — and where to go next.
References and further reading
The most useful starting points, in rough order of practicality for a home or small-scale producer, followed by the technical literature. University extension services are the single best free source of tested home-drying guidance: they are written by food scientists, reviewed, and updated.
Links point to the publishing organisations. Where a title is a book or journal rather than an online resource, no link is given.
Standards and regulators
| Body | Region | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| FAO / WHO — Codex Alimentarius | International | Standards for dried fruit, hygiene principles, food labelling |
| US FDA | United States | Food safety (FSMA), labelling, facility registration, cGMP |
| USDA FSIS | United States | Meat and poultry products, including jerky lethality and stability |
| USDA NOP | United States | Organic certification |
| EFSA / European Commission | European Union | Food law, hygiene, labelling, novel foods, additives |
| UK FSA | United Kingdom | Food hygiene and labelling |
| CFIA / Health Canada | Canada | Food safety, labelling, import |
| FSANZ | Australia / New Zealand | Food standards code, labelling |
| FSSAI | India | Food standards, licensing, labelling |
| ISO | International | ISO 22000 food safety management; ISO 9001 quality |
| GFSI-recognised schemes | International | BRCGS, SQF, IFS, FSSC 22000 — retailer-facing certification |
Regulations and standards are revised regularly. Treat this table as a map of who to ask, not as the rules themselves.
Books, courses and communities
📚 Books
- So Easy to Preserve — Georgia Cooperative Extension. The standard home reference.
- Handbook of Food Preservation — the dehydration chapters are textbook-grade.
- Food Drying with an Attitude — Mary T. Bell. Practical, recipe-led.
- Dry It — You'll Like It — Gen MacManiman. Classic home manual.
- The Solar Food Dryer — Eben Fodor. Build-focused.
- Introduction to Food Engineering — Singh & Heldman. Psychrometrics and drying theory.
🎓 Courses and training
- Extension-service workshops on home food preservation (usually seasonal and low-cost).
- HACCP and food-safety training from accredited providers — often a legal requirement for commercial producers.
- Online food-science courses (edX, Coursera, university outreach) covering food preservation and processing.
- Manufacturer training on your specific dryer, sealer or aw meter — always worth asking for.
💬 Communities and field knowledge
- Extension service hotlines and Master Food Preserver programmes.
- Dehydrating forums and subreddits — good for recipes and troubleshooting, variable on safety.
- Slow-food and charcuterie groups for curing and smokehouse practice.
- Small-farm and agri-processing networks, which are often the best source of practical solar-dryer experience.
🔬 Journals, if you want the theory
- Drying Technology — the dedicated drying journal.
- Journal of Food Engineering and Food and Bioproducts Processing.
- LWT — Food Science and Technology for quality studies.
- FAO agricultural services bulletins for small-scale and developing-country dryer design.
Watch: video guides
Video is the fastest way to show the techniques that resist description — how far a slice should bend before it is dry, what a properly loaded tray looks like, how air should move through a stack. These are independent channels, not endorsements: watch them for the handling and the process, then check the numbers against this knowledge base and your local extension service. Where a video and this site disagree on a safety threshold, treat the site's figure as the starting point and verify it with your own food-safety authority.
Opening this page requests no YouTube scripts, cookies or trackers. Only the still image on each tile is fetched, and only when the tile scrolls into view; the player itself loads from youtube-nocookie.com after a click. Every title is linked directly as well, so you can open it in a new tab instead.
Measurement equipment buyers guide
Instrumentation is where amateurs and professionals diverge most sharply. Buy in this order.
| Instrument | Why you need it | What to look for | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital probe thermometer | Jerky lethality and dryer verification | Fast response, 0.1 °F resolution, calibration check, waterproof probe | Essential |
| 0.1 g digital scale | Cure dosage, batch weights, yields, dosing dips | 1 kg capacity minimum, tare, stable readings | Essential |
| Oven/dryer thermometer | Real temperature, not the dial setting | Dial or digital; check it in boiling water | Essential |
| Hygrometer | Ambient humidity — the main cause of stalled batches | Reads 0–100 % RH, plus dew point ideally | Very useful |
| Moisture meter | Trend monitoring during drying | Understand its calibration limits on food; useful relatively | Useful |
| Water activity meter | The definitive safety and shelf-life measurement | Chilled-mirror or capacitive; check service and calibration support | Essential if selling |
| Timer / data logger | Records temperature and humidity through a run | USB download, long battery, wide temperature range | Useful |
| Anemometer | Verifying airflow across trays (1–2 m/s) | Cheap handheld is fine | Nice to have |
| Vacuum sealer | Oxygen removal for storage and retail | Bar-type with adjustable seal; bags or rolls available | Very useful |
| Metal detector / sieve | Foreign-matter control for commercial product | Sieving plus documented inspection is the minimum; detectors cost more | Commercial |
An uncalibrated thermometer is worse than no thermometer, because it produces confident wrong numbers. Check your probe in ice water (32 °F / 0 °C) and boiling water (212 °F / 100 °C at sea level, adjusted for altitude) monthly, and keep a note of the offset.
Improving this knowledge base
Everything here lives in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no build step, so extending it is straightforward:
- Add a food — append an entry to the
foodsarray inassets/data.js. It appears in the food guide, the filters and the search index automatically. - Add a glossary term, FAQ, troubleshooting entry or reference — same file, same pattern; each is rendered into its page at load time.
- Add a page — copy an existing page, change the title, and add it to the sidebar nav.
- Add a calculator — write a small function in
assets/tools.js, add the matching form fields and an output element to the tools page.
Keep the plain-language house style: state the number, explain why it matters, and say when it might not apply.