I made a huge batch of sausage and chicken jambalaya. Turned out great, spicy without killing you. Chopped/ shredded the chicken. Sliced the sausage about 1/8 thick, then cut each slice into fourths. Mixed about 1 cup of it with 1/2 cup of rice, then spread that on a tray, figuring that was about right for one serving.

So the chicken and rice dried in about 6 hours. The sausage was nowhere near dry. I didn't want to over dry the rest of it, so I picked out the sausage and continued to dry it by itself, ended up being a good 24 hours.

Anyone else have this issue? Should I have just dried the whole mess for 24 hours?

Different things take a different amount of time to dry. That is why I dry some things separately and add them together after drying. You really can't over dry things as that is the goal to get all of the moisture out. My big concern with meats and especially sausage is to get all of the fat out of it before drying, as the fat is what will go rancid if it is not removed.

Don't get over anxious to dehydrate your meats either and turn up the heat. I have burnt spaghetti sauce in my Excalibur.

I did pull some grease out of the sausage. I will probably dry it separately from now on. And I bagged it separately too in case it does spoil on our trips, then I can skip adding it to the mix.

So far I haven't burned anything. After all that work making it, would hate to ruin it.

I've had the same issue.

My solution was to cook and dry the sausage separately. Not sure if that was the best solution, but it worked for me.