I overcame my silly fear of the food dehydrator this weekend and I thought I’d share what I learned and document what I did to remember it later.
First I got the ripe apricots from the tree (duh).
Note: It is hard to get to the ripe apricots before the parrots do..
Then I pureed the apricots in my blender by adding just a little water. Since I didn’t really measure the puree, I then added a whole lemons worth of lemon juice and a third cup of honey (maybe? measuring honey wastes honey!) to a blender full of apricots and blended a little bit more. Up next was positioning in the dehydrator. I spread the goop evenly on the “fruit leather plastic trays” it came with and also used saran wrap since I read online that works too.
Trays
Plastic saran wrap
Each fruit leather used about a half cup. I also learned that you shouldn’t cut the plastic wrap too big otherwise it might blow into your goop and prevent it from drying which = no fun (especially after waiting so long…).
Speaking of waiting, I had read online to not use temps over 100F but after 20 hrs of drying at that temp, the middle wasn’t dehydrated, so I increased the heat to around 130F and it was dry in a few more hours. I think it would take no more than 10 hrs at 130F-ish. So here’s the final product:
I know, really exciting huh? It looks like a fruit roll up! Yum yum. Only thing is that I would recommend putting a tinsy bit more honey if your fruit is less ripe (like mine was). And I’m also now experimenting with using real sugar and brown sugar as well, to see what makes the best.
The final most important thing I learned is that the fruit leather trays are bogus. Waste of money (at least mine came with my dehydrator). Maybe they’ll be good for something else, but for fruit leathers they are a waste of time. They might work if you grease them, but saran wrap is easier and you don’t have to grease them, so you know what I’m using next!
Finally, anyone know what to do with figs? I have a tree full of them and unfortunately, drying them didn’t turn out as nicely as the apricots…
