Preparation from fruits of dried fruits is one of the most ancient natural methods allowing to keep taste and useful properties during the long period. There are several methods of preparation of various grades of fruit for drying and various ways of moisture removal from fruits.
It is required to you
- Fruit or berries
- Fruit knife.
- Ascorbic acid or pectin and sugar
- or honey
- or pineapple and lemon juice
- warm water.
- Paper towels.
- Solar dry place or oven.
- Gauze
- muslin
- cotton
- The screen for drying of fruit or baking sheets
- or cotton thread.
Instruction
1. Carefully select the best fruit. Wash up them, remove the slightest spots, cut out dents. Cut fruits on small pieces. The best size – on one sting.
2. Better to keep fruit, before drying it is necessary to process them. Depending on a type of a fruit, there are different ways. Scalding is suitable for apricots and apples. Dip slices for several seconds into boiled water, and put them in the colander suspended over the boiling water better. Previously prepare a big bowl with ice water. Place hot fruit in cold water to stop preparation process. Drain all water and dry slices on a towel.
3. Processing by ascorbic acid is suitable for all fruit. Crush 2 tablets of ascorbic acid and dissolve in two cups of warm water. Lower the cut fruit in the portions in solution and maintain several minutes. Get and dry on a towel.
4. It is possible to keep cherries, peaches and berries in pectinaceous solution not less than 5 minutes. For preparation of such solution take 1 bag of pectin and dissolve with? sugar cups in hot water. Dilute with one cup of cold water and put fruits or berries. Get fruit a skimmer and dry also on a towel.
5. Dried fruit in honey are very popular. It is so possible to process slices of bananas, peaches, apricots and pineapples. Mix 3 glasses of water and 1 glass of sugar. Warm up and add a glass of the fresh, not candied honey. Well mix and lower in honey slices of fruits for 3-5 minutes.
6. One more method also suitable for bananas, peaches and apples. It is necessary to unite 1 liter of pineapple juice with 1 liter of warm water and? a glass of the concentrated lemon juice. Slices of fruit plunge into liquid for 5 minutes, are taken out and put to dry on a paper towel.
7. The fruit prepared by any of these methods, are ready to further drying. If you have an opportunity to dry fruit on the street, you are sure that the next few days there will be hot and dry weather, and also you have a special screen – the wooden laths which are brought down in a square with the fabric tense on them, muslin or a gauze, then spread out slices of fruits on the lower part of the screen, close a cover and take out on air. Remove fruit for the night to the house that night dew didn't make them damp. You dry 5-6 days and don't forget during this time twice them to turn.
8. Such fruit as apples or a fig can be dried, having strung on pure cotton thread. Small knots between slices won't allow them to stick together. String slices on thread and hang up to dry between two vertical racks in the solar, well aired place. Don't forget to remove for the night to the house.
9. To dry up fruit in an oven, it is necessary to warm it previously to 50 degrees Celsius. Place berries or fruit on the baking sheets which are previously covered by cotton fabric, a gauze or pergament. Make sure that slices don't adjoin with each other. Remove fruits in an oven, but don't close it, and, on the contrary, leave open, having propped up any bar so that there was a gap in several centimeters. Through this crack moisture will evaporate. Don't allow temperature to rise above a mark of 50 degrees. Otherwise the outer surface of a fruit will harden, and process of evaporation of moisture will be broken.
10. Depending on a type of fruit the process can take from 4 to 12 hours. Ready fruit shouldn't be neither too crunchy, nor too soft. After process of drying is completed, take out baking sheets from an oven and leave to cool down at the room temperature at 10-12 hours.