Making sweet snacks that are also nutritious may be easier than you think when you have access to an oven, a simple kitchen appliance or nature's own dehydrator -- the sun. An ideal pick-me-up when you're on the go, eating dried fruit is a quick way to get vitamins, minerals and intense flavor in compact portions that don't bruise, get mushy or drip onto your clothes like fresh fruit can. When summer's harvest is fresh and ripe, there are a few tactics you can use to dehydrate the fruit for tasty, attractive eating the rest of the year.
Selection and Preparation
Sniffing, lightly squeezing and visually evaluating each piece of fruit for peak ripeness gives you an edge on making great-tasting dried fruit. Those simple quality tests help avoid overripe fruit, which can be tough and fibrous to chew after the dehydration process, and unripe fruit that yields bland or sour-tasting results. Washing the ripe fruit before you pit, core, cut or peel it removes residue from the fruit's surface that could otherwise end up in the dehydrated morsels. Some fruits, like plums and apricots, need only be split in half and their pits removed before drying. For sliced dried fruit, keeping the sections a uniform thickness ensures even dehydration and helps avoid pieces that are chewy at one end and overly dry at the other.
Pretreatment
Fruits that brown when their flesh is exposed to air -- like apples, peaches and pears -- benefit from pretreatment to slow down the natural oxidation process. Dip the fruit in an ascorbic acid solution or in fruit juice that has high vitamin C content, such as lemon or orange juice. Pineapple and cranberry juice dips also protect against oxidation and add flavor and color to the dehydrated fruit. Treat grapes, prunes and other tough-skinned fruits that are dried whole by dipping them in boiling water to crack the skins, allowing air and heat to penetrate for thorough dehydration.
Methods of Drying
Dehydrating fruit in an environment with temperature and air flow control is a technique that yields consistent quality. Food dehydrators, from small countertop models to stand-alone versions that produce family-size batches of dried fruit, allow for heat and circulation adjustments to fine-tune the drying process. Oven-drying control techniques are far less precise -- propping the door open, setting the thermostat on low and directing a fan to blow across the oven's opening -- but are handy for the occasional small batch of fruit. Outdoors, the sun and ambient breeze evaporate moisture from the fruit at nature's own pace.
Packing and Storing
Pasteurizing fruit that has been dried outdoors is a necessary step to eliminate insects and eggs that may have become embedded. Choose from one of two techniques: freezing at O F for two days or heating to 160 F for half an hour. Whichever dehydration method was used, conditioning -- a technique that allows the moisture content in dried fruit pieces to equalize -- is accomplished by packing the fruit loosely for about a week, then mixing thoroughly before packaging for long-term storage.
References
- University of Georgia Cooperative Extension Service; Preserving Food: Drying Fruits and Vegetables; Judy A. Harrison, et al.
- Virginia Cooperative Extension; Using Dehydration to Preserve Fruits, Vegetables and Meats; Renee Boyer, et al.
- Colorado State University Extension; Drying Fruits; P. Kendall, et al.; January 2007
