If you’re like me, dried fruits are one of your favorite foods. Not only does the nutrition content pack a wallop, but dried fruits make it easy to eat healthy when you’re on the go. They’re full of energy, vitamins and minerals that are good for everybody any time. Also, dried fruits are compact and easy to store. Just like when you’re canning your produce, having an ample supply of dried fruit is one of the things that lets you rest easy at night. Heck, just knowing that I’ve got a pretty near year’s supply of dried fruit in my pantry and root cellar makes me feel better when I watch the news or read the latest financial reports.
Get fruit for free or almost free
But you know what else? You can dry your own fruit for a fraction of what it costs to buy it at the store. Not only that, but you can add just about any kind of flavor you want to whatever kind of fruit you’re drying.
I’m talking about cinnamon spiced apples, salted peaches, port wine pears or whatever else you want to do. There’s virtually no end to what you can come up with to add variety.
Now, the easiest part about drying fruit is getting the fruit to begin with. It’s as easy as buying it at your local grocery store. If you buy the more ripe stock, you can often get more and spend less money doing so. Sometimes, if you talk to the store manager, you can get the overripe fruit that they’ve already taken off the floor because it’s unsellable.
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But, there’s another way to get your fruit for free. Depending upon where you live, you can also visit growers in your area. A good idea is to talk to the owners or the management. Ask them if they would mind if you picked up all the fallen fruit. Most of it will still be good, especially for drying.
Drying fruit is tried and true
And by the way, dehydrating or drying is the easiest, most common and oldest food-preservation method known to mankind. For thousands of years, our ancestors figured out that by removing the moisture from food, it would last for weeks months, or even years. You don’t have to improve on the old ways; they still work pretty good.
Dehydrating concentrates the natural salts and sugars in fruits so that the process of decay enzymes is slowed and bacteria and molds don’t take hold for a good long while. For millennia, all kinds of fruits, vegetables and nuts have been left in the fields to dry or put on drying mats. Similarly, humans have been drying and salting fish and meat for to be eaten later in a variety of ways.
More than one way to do it
Again, depending upon your area, you can either dry your fruit outside in the sun, in an oven or in your specially designed fruit dehydrator. I’ll talk about the first two here, in this piece. Later, in the DIY section, I’ll talk about how to make your own fruit dehydrator. To dry fruit the old fashioned way – before all of us relied upon electricity and gas – you can simply lay the fruit out and let it dry in the hot sun. But there are a couple of details you’ll want to know about.
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Slice your fruit thin
First, you need to slice the fruit up pretty thin – about 1/8 of an inch, for say, apples, pineapples, pears and the like. The thinner you slice the fruit, the quicker it will dry. Also, be sure to flatten the fruit when you lay it out. This will also help with the drying or dehydrating process.
But what should you set the sliced and flattened fruit on? Folks used to use wide, flat planks of wood, sometimes even metal, such as corrugated tin or any old sheet metal. Some folks used canvass sailcloth and other tough, tightly wound materials. I’ve heard of folks settin’ their fruit on their roofs, too.
Sun dry your fruit
But for today, I’d recommend some dark plastic sheeting. Make sure that it’s thick enough to not melt in the hot sun. Then lay another layer of the dark sheeting over the fruit. (If you can’t get your hands on some, use any kind of flat surface; even a sheet of plywood will work.) Make sure you do this in the heat of the day. Let the fruit dry between these layers for a good four hours or so.
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Then, remove the top layer of sheeting and let the fruit dry for another four hours or so. You may have to leave it up to six or seven hours. Check on the fruit about every hour after the fourth hour. You’ll know that the fruit is as dry as it should be when the center of each slice is the same consistency as the outside of the fruit.
But remember, drying fruit this way requires a long, hot day in the summer. This may or may not be possible where you live. Be sure to check the day’s weather before you slice up all your fruit.
Add a drying and flavor agent
That said, I would strongly recommend that you treat your fruit with a drying agent or accelerant. As I talked about earlier, adding a bit of alcohol will help the process along. If you don’t want to do that, you can add vinegar or salt – or both – to help the fruit dry.
You can also coat the slices with sugar or salt and sugar, to help with the dehydration process. And, as you’ve probably figured out by now, these drying agents also happen to add all kinds of flavors to the fruit.
Now, I know that not everybody lives in a hot summer climate. Some areas of the county, like the Bay Area of California and the Pacific Northwest, for example, may get hot days, but not a lot of them. But us folks in the Southwest, on the other hand, get more than our fair share of them.
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Use your oven to dry your fruit
That’s why I want to give you a quick and easy way to dry fruit out without having to wait on ‘Ol’ Man Sol’ to cooperate. That’s where your own kitchen oven comes in real handy. The process is real simple. Preheat your oven to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, go ahead and prepare the fruit as we discussed before. Slice the fruit thin and then lay it flat on a cooking sheet. Put whatever drying and flavoring agent you want on the fruit. If your oven has two racks inside it, use both of them. You can usually use two cooking sheets on each rack, giving you four cooking sheets full of fruit to dry.
If you have double ovens, so much the better. That fact makes for some good volume of dried fruit in almost no time at all. Once you’re prepped your fruit and laid it all out on your cooking sheet(s), just slide it on in the oven.
Make sure, however, not to close the oven door all the way. Leave it open an inch or so. If you have a tough time getting the oven door to stay open just a bit, a good trick you can do is to grab two good-sized carrots and set them between the oven door and the frame across both top corners of the oven door. That will keep the oven door open an inch or so, which is all you’ll need.
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After about an hour or so, you’ll want to check on your fruit. I say this because everybody’s oven is different than mine. Thermostats will vary from one oven to the next, so you never can really know for sure how hot your oven is. A little bit of experimenta- tion is called for here.
In the end, it don’t really matter. You’ll know when the fruit is done when its texture and dryness is the same in the center as it is on the outside. Now, some folks insist on turning their fruit every half-hour or so. They claim that it evens out the drying process. Truth is, I don’t doubt that it does.
But you know what? I don’t do that. I suppose it’s a good idea for the best evenness of dryness, but I just don’t have the time or inclination to set around and fool with it that much. What’s more, my fruit comes out fine and dandy without turning it at all.
The storage process is important, too!
One last point is the storage of your dried fruit. This is a process all itself.
The first step is to be sure that the dehydration process is complete. Once your dried fruit process is complete, set the fruit out to cool down. When it’s cool, put the dried fruit into glass mason jars, plastic Tupperware-type containers, or even plastic bags with a zip close. Be sure not to pack the fruit too tightly. Keep it loose and seal the container (push the air out if you’re using sealable plastic baggies.)
The second step is to put your containers of fruit in cool dry area of the house. Leave them there for at least a week, maybe even 10 days.
Next, check on the fruit in the containers by giving them a shake every day. This keeps the fruit from becoming one giant piece. It also may release so excess moisture, if any is still there. If you do see some, take that fruit and dry it out a bit more in your oven.
The fourth step is simply a repeat of step 3. Keep an eye on your fruit once a day for the entire 7-10 day period. You want to be sure that no moisture is in the fruit or has been released into your containers. Once you know you’re good to go, you can move onto the final steps.
The fifth step is to put the fruit in its containers into storage. Use the same containers you’ve just used. Only this time, you’re gonna want to pack the fruit in very tightly without damaging the fruit or the container. Once that’s done, seal the containers tightly.
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Step number six is really just a repeat of the second step. Store your dried fruit in a cool, dry area of the house. I use my pantry and my root cellar. Check on your fruit from time to time to make sure it’s doing okay and that there’s no mold present or other signs of spoilage.
The last step is to be sure to eat your dried fruit within a year or so at most. This time will vary depending upon what kind of “flavor” you’ve added to your fruit. Those treated with alcohol or salt will last a good deal longer. But still, it’s a good idea to not wait forever to eat it.
And why would you? It’s dang delicious!
Practice makes perfect
An easy way to go about your fruit drying is to make a routine out of it. Do it every change of season. That means that sometimes you’ll use the sun, other times, you’ll use your oven to dry your fruit.
Like most things, the more you do it, the better at it you’ll get. You’ll also figure out what kind of fruit you like best and which flavors you prefer. It’s basically an activity you can do during the halftime of a football game or on a Saturday evening watching a movie with your significant other. We usually have a pretty good variety flavorful dried going on in every batch.
