Dehydrating fruit

Now is the season of preserving fruitfulness. One of the ways of making harvests last and spread the fruits of your labour though the year is by applying different preserving methods to store produce. At this time of the year we make a lot of use of a dehydrator. There are lots of things you can use it for but we primarily use it for dehydrating plums and apples which are usually plentiful at this time of the year. 

There are recommendations about how long to put various fruit, vegetables and even meat to dehydrate but  trial and error produces the best results. We halve and de-stone plums and cut apples into slices and aim to dehydrate them to the point where they still retain a little chewiness. The process of dehydrating fruit results in a heightened intensity of flavour. 

You can add the dehydrated fruit to cooking or breakfast cereal but we mainly treat them as a snack. We like to think they are a healthy snack because no sugar or any other ingredients are added - just the fruit on its own.

A tray of apple dehydrated apple slices. The
dehydrator can accommodate 9 trays.

Plums and apples.  Several more jars of each to come.