I've
had a small dehydrating machine for several years now but my recent purchase of
a larger 1000 watt model second hand gave me the impetus to improve my skills
in the art of drying food in this way. This past weekend Andrew and I
dried 6 trays of mixed fruit again, another adventure in dehydrating.
With
a few earlier trial runs we'd already figured out:
1.
Wipe the outside but DON'T dunk the fruit in water in a Vitamin C mix to stop
it browning. It really doesn't need it and it just makes the fruit a lot
wetter to start with and harder to get just right in the dehydrator. Our
undunked fruit seems to come out with a better texture and we found browning of
the fruit really wasn't a problem.
2.
Leave the skins on. There is some good nutritional value in the skins and
they add some extra colour and interest to the end product.
3.
With most things a slice of about 1.2 cm or half an inch is about right.
In
our latest session we did organic apples, pears and blackboy peaches from our
orchard plus some bananas that we had on hand which were getting close to
over-ripe. We also put in two different kinds of grapes from
our vines. After 8 hours the apples,
pears and peaches came out lovely,
very
moreish, although the peaches were quite tart immediately afterwards.
They seemed to regain some of their sweetness over the following
hours.
The
bananas were divine. I can see how they could get addictive! What a
great way to use up any bananas though, before they get too ripe - dry them and
use them for yummy snacks. I am sure children in particular would love them.
The
pictures below show some of our trays of raw fruit ready to be processed and
then the end products. We put this lot into plastic, ziplock bags and
what a great snack they make.
Andrew
blended a mix of the bananas, apples, pears and peaches and we agreed it would
be wonderful in homemade muesli, muffins or fruit loaf.
Dehydrating
seems such a quick, easy, convenient way to help deal with a big surplus of
fruit in the autumn.
Below
: At the end when we'd mostly mixed the apples, pears, bananas and peaches
up together.
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