Dehydrating fruit

Each week in Bountiful Baskets, I get a nice assortment of fruit.  It mostly gets eaten outright, but lately it’s been tough for us to get through it before it goes bad.  Or, it’s just something we don’t particularly like a lot.  This week and last week, I got pears and nectarines that have sat, and the plums I got last week were starting to not look great anymore.  While trying to decide what to do with the pears, my friend D got a new fruit dehydrator to make raisins with the grapes we got.  I decided to ask to borrow it to at least dehydrate my pears and I picked it up yesterday.  Since you need the base and at least 4 trays, I decided I would try doing the nectarines, plums, and a couple bananas, plus we ended up putting a Granny Smith apple in too.

For the pears and the apple, I got out our peeler/corer/slicer.  Seriously, one of the best inventions for prepping pears and apples.  My girls love helping me use it.

Next, the pears, apples, and nectarines all need to be pre-treated to prevent them from browning.  There are a variety of options to do this, but I chose soaking them in lemon juice.  D had dehydrated her pears and dipped them in lemon juice, but felt like the lemon taste stayed with them, so I diluted my lemon juice with water, 50/50 ratio.  I left it in there about 5 minutes.

The plums I cut in half and removed the pits, the bananas I cut into 3/8″ slices.

I arranged it all on the trays, stacked the trays, plugged it in, and flipped the switch.

I let it run overnight, approximately 10 hours and here is what I woke up to.

It’s a browner than I wanted it to be, but it’s still sweet and full of flavor.  I think I may have left it in the dehydrator too long, probably should have started it later in the evening.  Also, I wonder if some of it was not in the lemon juice long enough or if my diluting the lemon juice had some effect.  Still a good experiment and thanks to D for letting me borrow the dehydrator!

Tags: apple, banana, fruit, grapes, pear, plum