One of our favorite things to snack on is dried apple slices. Harold and I found out about these when a lady at our square dance club always brought containers of these to dances. It's a good low-fat, low-calorie snack, and we like to munch on these in the winter when we play cards or Scrabble. We also like popcorn, too, and we grow that ourselves in the garden. Just about any firm tart apple will dry well. Red Delicious apples don't do well, however. At least we don't care for them. This year we dried apples from our tree, Prairie Magic apples, and some from a fellow beekeeper's tree (not sure what kind they are), and also apples we got from an old farmstead that nobody wanted (probably Haralsons).
I slice the apples in about 1/8 inch thickness, and swirl them around in a little lemon juice in a bowl (so the slices don't turn dark), then arrange them on the drying trays that came with my Nesco dehydrator. I can do 10 trays at a time, and end up with 3 ziplock bags of apples. I store the bags in the freezer to keep crisp. We will be drying apples for several evenings so I can end up with about 10 baggies of dried apples. The apples must be dried for about 10-12 hours on 135 degrees setting on my dehydrator, so I usually do these in the evening and let the dehydrator run all night long and take them out first thing in the morning. The dried slices turn out a little tart, a little sweet, and crunchy. The more you chew on them, the more "apple-y" they taste!
 |
| A tray of apples ready for drying |
|
 |
| The slices are arranged for maximum air drying |
|
 |
| Ten trays stacked up and plugged in overnight. |
 |
| Three trays of dried slices ready to bag up. |
 |
| A finished bag full of dried slices ready for storing in the freezer |
No comments:
Post a Comment