Don’t cook your food, just dry it!

YOU can tuck your spiraliser in that cupboard where the slow-cooker and juicer are gathering dust. The latest must-have appliance, it seems, is a food dehydrator.

Sales of the devices – which extract water from food without cooking it – are soaring. Publicity from health-conscious celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and cookbook authors the Hemsley sisters has created a boom in demand for home-dried produce.

The gadgets, which use hot air to dry out fruits and other foods, range in price from £25 to nearly £700.

Food lovers are using them to dry everything from strawberries to mushrooms and meat for storing in kitchen cupboard jars.

Sales at Lakeland have risen by a fifth in the past 12 months, with customers using the gadgets to turn vegetables and fruit into ‘guilt-free’ crisp-style snacks, according to a spokesman. Online retailer Amazon has almost doubled its sales of dehydrators since last year.

Miss Paltrow has described the kitchen devices as a ‘must’ for people living on a raw-food diet.