Apples – Dehydrating

There are many different way to preserve apples. There is canning, freezing, placing in root cellars, and dehydrating. Today, I will be talking about dehydrating apples using a dehydrator as opposed to solar dehydrating or dehydrating using your kitchen oven.

Step One:

Wash and dry the apples. Peel the apples. You can leave the peel on if you want to, but I have found that it makes the dehydrated apple tougher. Core and slice the apples. Keep sliced apple pieces between 1/8 to ¼ inches thick.

 

Step Two:

Using one of the following methods to treat the apples to protect them against discoloration.

• Lemon Juice: mix 1 cup of lemon juice and 1 quart of water together. (This is what I used this time, and I am not liking the coloring of the apple after they were dehydrated. I think that using ascorbic acid gives a much better result.)
• Sodium Bisulfite: mix together 2 teaspoons of sodium bisulfite with 1 quart of water.
• Ascorbic Acid: mix 1 Tablespoon and 1 quart of water

Don't let the apple slices soak in the mixture for more than 10 minutes. Drain the liquid from the apples. (I used a slotted spoon to lift the apples out of the liquid and drained them in a colander.)

Step Three:

Place in single layers onto the dehydrator trays. Place in dehydrator and allow the fruit to completely dry rotating trays every 2 hours. For me, the total time for drying the apples in the dehydrator took about 6 hours.

Step Four:

Store the dehydrated apples in an air-tight container and use within 1 year. (I used sandwich bags.)

Enjoy and thank you for visiting my blog.