Hopeless romantic that I am, I asked my husband for a food dehydrator
for our 2-year anniversary, and tolerant soul that he is, he got me
one. Dried fruit has long been one of my favorite snacks (as a pre-teen I
told my mother I had obsessive-compulsive raisin eating disorder), but
purchasing it is problematic for 3 reasons: one, aside from raisins, it
tends to be extremely expensive, particularly if you buy organic; two,
it often has sulfites, food coloring, added sugar and other
undesirables. With my new dehydrator I can now make dried fruits exactly
to my liking (and, apparently, a plethora of other foods can also be
made in it, but more on that in a future post.)Dried fruit experiment #1: dried apples and kiwis.
I got the apples for 99 cents a pound from this fantastic fruit market in Astoria. Regrettably they were not organic, but they were local (upstate New York.) The kiwis were from Italy, but I reallllly wanted to make dried kiwi as I had recently tried some and it was sublime. I washed everything really thoroughly and my husband helped slice them into thin slices. I didn't peel anything because I am lazy and because peel is good for you (obviously better for you if your fruit is organic, but I'm doing the best I can.) The instruction book which came with the dehydrator said to dry them for 4-10 hours, which was a rather unhelpfully wide range, so we set the machine to the recommended 135 degrees before bed and turned it off around 7 hours later.
Everything came out quite yummy, but in future I would dry these particular fruits for a slightly shorter time and cut them a little thicker so they are a bit chewier and moister.
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