How to Dry Fruit With a Dehydrator

Dried fruit can be a nutritious snack or a complement to another dish. You can add dried fruit to your cereal or to top off ice cream. It can be baked into muffins or cakes. And of course you can simply eat it by itself. It makes a great after school snack for the kids and keeps them away from all of those processed sugary snacks that can be so bad for them. Dried fruit is truly nature's candy. Dried fruit taste sweeter than fresh fruit because the water has been taken out of it, which makes the flavor of the fruit concentrated. Dried fruit can be made many different ways. You can dry it in your oven, place it in a secure place in the sun or use a dehydrator. The dehydrator is perhaps the most convenient method. Think of it as set it and forget it dried treats. Follow the simple instructions for preparing and drying your own dried fruit snacks.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Dehydrator
• Assortment of fruit that you wish to dry

1. You will want to begin by preparing your fruit. Always wash the fruit before using it. After you wash the fruit, you will want to core it. Coring is not absolutely necessary, some fruits can be left whole while other fruits should be cut in half or sliced before they are dried. When you are slicing the fruit, you will want to slice them in thin uniform slices. This will ensure that all of the slices dry at the same time. While you may choose to not peel your fruit, be aware that unpeeled fruit will take longer to dry than fruit that has been peeled.

2. Fruit can darken when it is being dried. If you are planning on storing your dried fruit for a long period of time, you may want to pre-treat the fruit to prevent it from darkening. Some recipes for drying fruit call for something as simple as lemon juice as a pre-treatment, others call for sulfite. If you use sulfite, you should know that they can cause a cause a reaction in people with asthma. If you or someone in your family has asthma and you want to pre-treat your fruit, you may want to choose another method.

3. After you have prepared and pre-treated your fruit, you will be ready to put it into the dehydrator. Place the fruit in a single layer on the individual drying trays. Make sure that your pieces of fruit do not overlap each other or even touch. This can cause spots of the fruit to not dry completely.

4. Different types of fruit will take different times to dry. Your dehydrator should come with a booklet that will give you drying times. If you do not have the booklet or it does not cover the types of fruit that you are drying, there are many online sites that can give you information on drying times.

5. After the fruit has reached the desired dryness, it is ready to store or enjoy. The fruit should retain about 20 percent of its moisture after it has been dried.

[Cherst1031]

on 8/3/2008 Very helpful, thanks!

[only1special1]

on 4/3/2008 Nice article. I'm a little partial though cause I love to snack on dried fruit