Our initial batch of dehydrating was feverish – there were lemons, oranges, pears, apples, lemon and lime zest and then we paused. We had to eat some of our bounty after all.
I wasn’t wholly convinced of the merit of our oranges and lemons. They looked awesome and smelled wonderful – I just couldn’t imagine eating a whole lot of them. When I finally got brave enough (laugh) to try them on Friday night, I discovered that we will go through them fast.
It was time to fire up the dehydrator again – this time we chose to replenish our dwindling dried apples (choosing Spartans) and dehydrating pineapple slices.
The pineapples slices are not candied – they are merely slices of pineapple thrown into the unit at 135 degrees and their moisture content is slowly removed.
3-pounds of dried apple slices fit into a single mason jar – as do 2 pineapples. It’s easy to overeat when consuming dried fruit but the flavor is so intense that you don’t need quantity.
ADVENTURES IN DEHYDRATING – PINEAPPLES AND APPLES
November 7, 2016 by Joel MacCharles
Our initial batch of dehydrating was feverish – there were lemons, oranges, pears, apples, lemon and lime zest and then we paused. We had to eat some of our bounty after all.
I wasn’t wholly convinced of the merit of our oranges and lemons. They looked awesome and smelled wonderful – I just couldn’t imagine eating a whole lot of them. When I finally got brave enough (laugh) to try them on Friday night, I discovered that we will go through them fast.
It was time to fire up the dehydrator again – this time we chose to replenish our dwindling dried apples (choosing Spartans) and dehydrating pineapple slices.
The pineapples slices are not candied – they are merely slices of pineapple thrown into the unit at 135 degrees and their moisture content is slowly removed.
3-pounds of dried apple slices fit into a single mason jar – as do 2 pineapples. It’s easy to overeat when consuming dried fruit but the flavor is so intense that you don’t need quantity.
We also changed our approach this time – using a mandolin (food slicer) to cut our slices of both. I had used a knife previously (something I am very comfortable with) but have learned my lesson – the mandolin will save hours of drying time and checking time. Each slice is uniform in thickness and the entire batch of a single fruit finishes at the same time and is most efficient. Our slices were about 1/8 of an inch (3-4 mm).