How to prepare delicious, genuine, and cheap dried fruit at home
The best way to store food, maintaining their nutritional characteristics and especially their taste, is dehydration.
Dehydration is a process which the extracts the water or moisture present in the food itself, by the use of high temperatures and a ventilation system.
Dehydrating fruit, for example, it is a great way to have on hand a healthy and nutritious snack, to be consumed, for example, together with yogurt.
Here's how to do it! :-)
via ecoinventos.com
You can also buy dried fruit at the supermarket, but the price at which it is sold is not low. Why should you spend money when you can simply make it at home?
To dehydrate fruit you will need an electric dehydrator, or alternatively, a conventional oven.
First of all you need to cut each type of fruit into very thin slices with a sharp knife. Pears, apples, oranges, pineapple, kiwi, strawberries . . . whatever you like!
If you use an oven, set the temperature to 90°C and leave the fruit slices on a baking sheet in the oven for one hour. With an electric dehydrator set to 50°C for five or six hours.
Obviously, the dehydration process executed with an electric dehydrator will give more efficient results, due to the slow evaporation of the water. In fact, a 50°C temperature is ideal to keep intact the nutritional properties of the fruit, such as vitamins.
If you use a conventional oven then you must be careful to leave the oven door open for 5 or 10 cm, to let out the moisture produced. If you have a ventilated electric oven, it is advisable to use it.
It is possible to dry fruit in the traditional method which is just simply leaving slices of fruit in the sun. The open air and the heat will evaporate the water.
In the following video, you can learn the entire dehydration process and make your own delicious homemade dried fruit snacks at almost no charge!
