>When I dry my beef or venison jerky, the dehydrator seems awfully hot. It
>has only one setting, ON or OFF, no temp adjustment. Should I dry the meat
>with just a regular fan and no heat, because if it is hot to the touch,
>isnt' that too hot?Aren't I coooking, rather than drying the meat, with a
>dehydrator like this? I think it is a mr Coffee or something like that from
>Kmart.
>
From my experience of drying fruits and meats (i have a  raw dry food
business) meat is very easy to dry and take very little time (2 days instead
of 7 days for plums for ex.) while keeping the temperature below 105f . A
fan without heat wil do it.the product is amazingly different under those
temperatures , the enzymes are getting dormant like in a seed and are
getting reactivated  once rehydrated in your mouth to liberate the flavour
of the living product, the  colour stay the same that the fresh product
(strawberries are red, and bananas yellow very different from commercial
dried bananas).
For meat the best way to dry them is by cold , hanging in thin slices in the
fridge. Drying by heat (even gentle heat) seems  to produce more sugar in
the end product (the taste is sweet).
By cold,  the process is slower but the flavor is more like an aged cheese
or a raw ham and sausages.
your dryer seems to be an oven because 105 f is just barely over the body
temperature so not very noticeable.
jean-claude