Tab's jerky thread sparked this query. Dried fruit procedures?

[pinto]

There's a bumper crop of stone fruit this year, locally. Peaches, apricots. Seems everyone is trying to give some away. I love dried fruit, have never made it myself. Would like to try it while the time is ripe, so to speak...

[noamnety]

1. I got a dehydrator at a thrift shop a couple years ago

and there wasn't much to it. Wash fruit, cut fruit, lay in on trays, plug in. When it seems like dried fruit, remove.

Checking just now, I see our local craigslist has had 5 of them listed in the last month - might be worth checking your area.

[pinto]

2. Thanks. Seems pretty straight forward. I like dried fruit for snacks.

[hippywife]

3. Make sure you check reviews

at various sites for food dehydrators. I almost bought one from craigslist until I went to amazon.com and a couple of other sites and read the reviews on the particular model I was looking at. One thing to consider is how long it takes. The one I was looking at took a day and a half, where others took hours. I didn't see where using up that much energy to run the thing that long would really be of benefit. It was something I hadn't even considered initially when I was looking around for one.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. One important feature is a fan.

The slower ones tend not to have one.

Some models also have a fruit leather screen for making dried fruit in a different form.

[hippywife]

5. Other good points.

I had forgot those. I still haven't gotten one yet and probably won't for awhile yet. Freezing everything in the meantime.

[badgerpup]

6. I loves my dehydrator....

...I dry mostly onions, celery and spinach, since I like having those on hand to use for cooking.
Drying intensifies the flavor, and they don't turn into a green slime alien life form :hide: in your refrigerator...you can keep them in jars in the cupboard.

When you go to dry fruit...say, apples...PEEL THEM. I know the cute picture on the box shows them with the bright red skin still on, but don't you believe it. The fruit shrinks away from the skin, which can't contract...and it takes much longer to dry. Trust me; peel your apples.
I toss fruit in a very weak lemon juice and water solution while I'm getting them ready to avoid browning. I recommend Granny Smith or other nice tart apple for drying...but I've had good luck with Fuji apples too.
Bananas dry sweeter than you might think, and kiwis dry so tart they will will turn your mouth inside out.

If you're going to do cranberries blanch (boil) them first...they have this waxy covering that's almost impervious to the dehrydator. Getting nice whole Craisin-type cranberries is an art which I have not yet mastered. :dunce:
I just save what comes out of the dehydrator and put them in the must for cranberry wine. :shrug:

[noamnety]

7. dried spinach?

you put it in soups? quiche-like things? I've never thought about doing that, but I have a ton of swiss chard in the garden.

[badgerpup]

8. It's surprisingly versatile...

:hi:

:hug:(that's for asking!)

I've put it in scrambled eggs, devilled eggs, pasta dishes (both the hot ones and the pasta salad types), soups, stews, tuna salad (adds a whole 'nother level of flavor!)and added it as another herb when I make my own salad dressings.

It IS dry, so you can crumble it and use it like basil or parsley...I've put it on toasted bread and cheese, poached or fried eggs, used it in meatloaf, tunaburgers, turkeyburgers, and a rice-barley-veg-cheese dish (that I call 'glog' :crazy:) or to make ramen noodles more palatable and interesting.
Anywhere you think it might be interesting or helpful, it usually is. :thumbsup:

Drying intensifies the scent and flavor, and doesn't hurt the color any.

[Tab]

9. Only thing is you need a longer dry time.

They contain more moisture than beef, so they need to go longer, and at a lower temperature.

That was correct upthread - you need a dehydrator with a fan. All the ones I looked at had fans, it didn't even occur to me that there might be some that didn't (far cheaper ones, presumably).

Another way to double-dip would be to find a small countertop convection oven that will go down to about 90 or 100 degrees. My stove is a convection oven, but it won't allow the convection to run for anything under 300 degrees (I haven't really thought about why, but it'd be nice for a number of things). Anything lower, I have to do it as regular bake on that machine. Doesn't matter, as I almost always cook with convection. But for dehydrating fruits and such, a dehydrator (yes, with a fan) would be nice. Most brands that are in that class probably come with "recipe" (or at least "technique") booklets on what settings to use for various things. I know my Nesco did. Usually the temp is printed on the dehydrator itself (e.g.: meats at 165). The time varies depending on how strong the wattage/motor is, and how thick you made your slices.

If you have the knife skills of H2S you can probably have dried apples within 30 seconds, but the rest of us would have to settle for a multi-hour wait. :hi:

Thinking of it now, there's something to be said for having a home slicer. I don't have one myself, and don't know how the home ones are, but I used to run these big-assed slicing machines when I was cooking for a living. You can, of course, put veggies and other stuff in there and get extremely consistent slices. Some things are a pain - tomatoes make a gawdawful mess unless you have the right kind of tomato, and cheese is a pain to clean up after, and pastrami is probably the worst. That's why the supermarket deli counters always have their sliced pastrami precut in a bowl (I'm presuming here, as I never worked in a supermarket deli), mainly because they don't want to spend 20 minutes cleaning the damn machine every time someone wants a quarter-pound of pastrami.

Anyway, I digress.

[wildeyed]

10. I bought a bunch of peach "seconds" at the farmers market.

I picked through the rejects pile and got a big bag of decent but un-aesthetic peaches for $2. They are ripening on the counter. Hopefully I will make fruit leather with them later this week.

The recipe is easy. Cut fruit up, put it in the blender or food processor, spread mush on a dehydrator tray and dry. You could also try it on a cookie sheet in the sun. I talked to a guy at the farmers market who dehydrates in a car parked in the sun with a window cracked open for ventilation.

I also noticed that you can buy the unattractive tomatoes at a very low price, so next week I might get some of those and make sundried tomatoes.

As far as what to use to dry the fruit, I have a borrowed Ronco dehydrator, the kind no one likes. It seems to work fine, it just takes forever. I will probably purchase one of my own with a fan as soon as I can decide which one I want/can afford. I am also working on a design for a solar dryer. Once I get that figured out, I will post the results.

You could try canning if the bounty is truly staggering.