Knowledge Base › Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Can you use a silicon mat in a dehydrator?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on February 20, 2024

Join Chef Char Nolan in her virtual office as she welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to ask anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Nolan is ready to answer them all.

View Event Details

Question

Jane Barnett

Can you use a silicon mat in a dehydrator?

Answer

My dehydrator comes with these sheets, um, and I haven't used my dehydrator in a really long time. I use parchment paper lots of times. So, uh, you can either just sit it flat on that Meshy grill, use the sheets that Excalibur provides for you, uh, or use, uh, parchment paper. And it's interesting, when I was a student at Rouxbe, I bought, um, a an inexpensive, uh, dehydrator that took for days and days and days to make dehydrated crackers and things like that. And then I saw an ad on Facebook for an Excalibur, and, um, I paid a hundred dollars for it. It's a five, it has five shelves in it, and I never use it. So my, my sense is, uh, keeping your oven on as low as a temperature as can be, uh, certainly helps to also develop really nice dehydrated foods.

Char Nolan

Chef Instructor

Char Nolan is a serious crusader for plant-based education, armed with a degree in public health from Philadelphia’s Temple University. She teaches nutrition and plant-based cooking throughout Philadelphia, and in many underserved communities. Char holds a certificate in plant-based nutrition from eCornell and completed Rouxbe’s Plant-Based Professional Certification course in 2015. In 2019, Char completed post-graduate course work in social media marketing at the University of the Arts. When she is not cooking or teaching, she manages social media accounts for several plant-based influencers. Char prides herself on learning everything she knows about cooking from growing up in her grandparents’ Italian restaurant. Her favorite vegetables are Brussels sprouts and kale, of course. Char originally hails from Queens, NY, but has lived in Philadelphia most of her adult life. She is a former Peace Corps Volunteer.