[cheebacheeba]

It's basically a "dryer".
You can dehydrate in an oven on very low temps, though I have not tried myself.

Mine is a machine that's made solely for this purpose.
You can put sliced fruit, meat, vegetables in there - and through using a low but steady heats in combination with air circulation, the moisture/water content is gradually drawn out of the food, rather than say "cooking" it.

So I can put apple slices in, and end up with crunchy apple chips. Pineapple is great too.
You can also make the aforementioned jerky which is more or less a preserved/seasoned meat. Very high in protein, low in fat.

Without the water content, the rest of the flavours concentrate so you get really nice, pure and intense flavours.