How to dry apples at home: preparation and drying in the oven, microwave, on the street. Harvesting dried apples for the winter

An apple is a healthy fruit that is available to almost everyone. To preserve the benefits of vitamins and a pleasant taste for the winter, it is enough just to make dried fruits from apples. good for snacking, making compote or using in pastries or porridge. So that during storage the product does not lose its taste and does not become moldy, you need to know how to properly dry apples.

There are several ways, some of which are quite possible to use at home.

Drying preparation

Before you dry apples at home, you need to carefully prepare them. Sort the fruit, remove the wormy and overripe. It is best to choose a sweet and sour variety, these will be the tastiest. Wash selected apples thoroughly to remove dust and chemical residues that may have been used in cultivation. To make dried fruit faster, remove the core and cut off the skin. In order not to mess around and do everything neatly, use a special stainless steel tube. If you don’t feel like messing around, you can just cut the apples into slices. After that, you can go directly to drying.

How to dry apples at home in the sun

Natural drying in the sun is considered one of the most beneficial ways for the body to prepare any dried fruit.

This also applies to apples. To cook them this way at home, cut into slices or slices and spread evenly on a table or baking sheet. You can also use a grid or grid. You can also cook pears or bananas in the same way. The temperature should be high enough so that the fruit begins to dry out and not rot. Try to place the apples in direct sunlight. The ideal place for this is a balcony. Alternatively, you can string the slices on a thick thread and hang them under the sun, so they will take up less space. Now you know the most useful. But the preparation will take several days. What if you don't feel like waiting? Use the oven!

How to dry apples in the oven

If you do not want to dry in the sun or do not succeed, an oven will do. How to dry apples at home in this way? Put the slices on a baking sheet and dry at fifty degrees. In no case do not immediately turn on a high temperature. Apples will be covered with a crust, from under which moisture will not evaporate. Only when the slices dry out, you can increase the temperature to seventy degrees. At the final stage, the fire again needs to be reduced a little. Keep the door slightly ajar to allow steam to escape freely from the oven. The entire drying process will take about six hours. You can also purchase a special dryer, which will allow you to no longer think about how to dry apples at home. But if you plan to cook dried fruits not too often, such a device is not so necessary. The two methods described above are sufficient.

The best apples for drying are sweet and sour in taste and have a lot of solids in their composition. Due to the high content of dry matter in apples, a high yield of dry apples is obtained, and the sweet and sour taste gives them good taste qualities.

Sweet apples are not suitable for drying, they are tasteless.

The best varieties of apples for drying can be called: Antonovka, Aport, Pepin, that is, sour varieties that ripen in autumn. But winter varieties are rarely used for drying, and if they do, they use good-quality carrion.

The fruits of summer varieties can also give good drying. It is worth using for drying the fruits of a wild forest apple tree.

The easy way to dry

Apples should be large and medium with a small seed chamber and thin skin. Such fruits in preparation for drying give little waste.

Before drying, apples must be washed, then cut into circles, slices or halves and put to dry. These are the so-called ordinary dried apples. Ready dry fruits turn out dark, regardless of how they were dried (in the oven, in the sun).

An improved drying method is that the sliced ​​apples are preliminarily kept in a 1% solution of table salt (100 grams of salt is dissolved in a bucket of water) for several minutes. Dried fruits in this case are much lighter than with the usual drying method.

Even better results are obtained by fumigating apples before drying. They are fumigated with sulfur for 5-10 minutes. Sulfur requires 2 grams per 1 kilogram of apples. Instead, apples can be kept for 2-3 minutes in an aqueous 0.2% solution of sulfurous acid (1-2 grams of acid per 1 liter of water.) To keep apples in a solution of sulfurous acid, use a basket, as in blanching. Before use in dry form, apples processed in this way must be scalded with boiling water.

When drying apples in the oven, the following regime is observed: first they are dried at a temperature of 85 degrees, at the end of drying - at 50-55 degrees. During the drying process, the apples are removed from the oven every 2 hours and mixed.

To speed up the drying of apples, the temperature in the oven can be maintained at 95-100 degrees, but every 40-50 minutes the sieves must be removed and the fruits cooled. The drying of apples is completed when the bulk of the circles (cutting) are no longer crushed by strong pressure with the fingers.

When removing ready-made apples, you need to choose under-dried mugs on a separate sieve for drying. Due to the fact that the apples dry unevenly, after drying, the finished products are poured into a box so that they acquire the same humidity and are kept in it for about two weeks. After that, dried apples are packed in small bags.

Normally dried apples have a different color (depending on the method of drying) - from greenish-cream or yellow to dark brown.

After jam, compotes and marmalade are cooked from apples collected in their own garden, any owner of a country house or cottage thinks about how to save the rest of the harvest of these healthy and tasty fruits. A good solution to this problem is drying apples, which allows you to get a product that can not only be stored for a long time, but also contains most of the vitamins and nutrients that make up fresh fruits.

Dried apples, for which storage does not require special conditions, are a versatile product, they can be used to make compotes, fruit drinks and jelly, to cook delicious fillings for pies and other pastries from them. In order for dried apples to meet all the characteristics listed above, you should be aware of the features of the process of processing fresh fruits and adhere to certain rules when implementing it.

Drying apples at home, as a way to harvest such a fruit for the winter, is suitable for all varieties, but you can end up with a tasty product only if you choose the right raw materials for its preparation. Apples of autumn varieties, such as Aport, Antonovka and Pepin saffron, are optimally suited for drying. Such varieties are distinguished not only by a pleasant sweet and sour taste, which is preserved even in the dried product, but also by a large amount of solids in their dense pulp, which simplifies the process of their processing and speeds it up.

It is also possible to dry winter varieties of apples at home, but for these purposes it is better to choose fruits that have fallen from a tree on their own, which are not badly damaged by hitting the ground. Summer varieties of such fruits, if they have a sour taste, can also be used for drying, during which a product with good taste characteristics can be obtained. Sweet varieties of apples, when dried, lose their pronounced taste, so they are rarely processed in this way.

How to prepare apples for drying?

Before you start harvesting apples for the winter by drying, you need to properly prepare the fruits for such processing. Fruits of medium and large size, with a thin skin and a small seed chamber, are best suited for processing by this method, and when they are dried, a minimum amount of waste is generated.

For drying, so that the finished product has a good taste, only ripe apples are used, the preparation of which for processing is as follows:

• Fruits intended for drying are thoroughly washed, spoiled places and wormholes are removed from them with a knife. After washing, the apples must be wiped dry to speed up the drying process.
• If the apples are dried exclusively for compote, then it is not necessary to remove the core from them, but if the prepared dried fruits are also planned to be used for baking, then this should be done. To perform this procedure, you can use a special device in the form of a tube with a sharpened end part, or simply cut the fruit into slices and use a knife to remove inedible parts from them.
• It makes sense to peel apples before drying them only if they are purchased in a store or on the market. Fruits grown in their backyard, in order not to lose most of the vitamins and nutrients that they contain, it is better to dry with the peel.
• In order for apples to dry quickly and evenly, they are cut into pieces, the thickness of which should not exceed 5 mm.
• To protect cut fruits from browning during the drying process, they can be kept for several minutes in a solution of water with salt (10 grams of salt per liter of water) or acid (2 grams of citric or acetic acid per liter of water).

To speed up the processing process, freshly cut fruit can be blanched, which can be done in one of two ways:

• chopped fruits are placed in water heated to a temperature of 90 0 for a few seconds;
• a sieve with chopped fruits is held over a container of boiling water.

Deciding to blanched the fruits before drying, it should be borne in mind that the fruits during this procedure lose some of the sugar and acid, so their taste after processing will not be as bright as that of the original raw materials.

Drying methods

For drying apples, depending on the technical devices available, taste preferences and a number of other factors, you can choose one of many methods. Such methods differ both in the financial cost of the procedure and the technology for its implementation, and in the taste characteristics that distinguish the finished product.

Outdoors

Drying apples in the sun is the least financially costly, but at the same time the most time-consuming method of harvesting such fruits, which mankind has been using since ancient times. Drying apples in this way is possible only in the summer and in regions with a predominantly dry climate. The main advantage of this method is that it can be used to simultaneously harvest a large number of fruits at once, which are laid out in sliced ​​form on grates, wooden or metal pallets, or hung, being strung on threads.

Apples, which can take from 7 to 15 days to dry outdoors, must be turned over every day to ensure they dry evenly on all sides, and also protect them from dust and dirt settling, damage by flying and crawling insects. If the processing technology in this way is observed, then the pieces of dried fruit become light brown in color, become elastic and do not stick to each other.

Drying in the oven, on the stove, in the oven

You can also process apples with the help of kitchen appliances, which significantly speeds up the process of their drying, while the final product is of high quality and presentable appearance. The most common drying methods using household kitchen appliances include:

• Drying apples in a gas stove oven is the most common way, for which the cut fruits are laid out in one layer on a baking sheet or grate and placed in the working chamber of the stove. The temperature in the oven, when processing fruits in this way, is set within 75 0, and by the end of the process it can be reduced to 50-55 0. Pieces of fruit on a baking sheet, so that they do not burn, must be mixed every 1.5-2 hours, and in order to speed up the drying process, it can be done with air convection, opening the oven door to the width of the palm. Drying time in a gas oven, after which the pieces of fruit should acquire a light cream color, is on average 7-8 hours. Drying apples in an electric oven is performed in a similar way.
• If it is not possible to dry apples in the oven, then this can also be done over the stove by stringing pieces of fruit on threads, or by spreading them on a baking sheet or a high grate. In a similar way, fruits dry quickly enough - in just a couple of hours, but at the same time they must be constantly monitored so that they do not burn out.
• Drying apples in the microwave. You can also process fresh fruits into dried fruits using a microwave, for which the sliced ​​\u200b\u200bfruits are placed in one layer on a plate, placed in the oven and run for 2 minutes. If the fruit for such a period of time does not dry to the desired state, then the procedure should be repeated.

Drying in an electric dryer

The easiest way to dry apples is in an electric dryer - a device specially designed for processing fruits and vegetables.

To obtain high-quality dried fruits with the help of such a device, fruits cut into thin slices are placed on the grids of an electric dryer and kept in its chamber at the required temperature until fully cooked.

For drying apples in such a device, it will take about 2 hours of time, while the fruits will not burn, will not be covered with dust and fumes, they will retain the maximum amount of vitamins and other useful substances.

How to determine if apples are ready or not?

It is possible to determine that the pieces of fruit are well dried and the process of their dehydration should be completed by the following factors:

• the skin of the fruit darkened;
• the pulp of the fruit is not sticky, but at the same time it is soft and elastic;
• with strong pressure on the dried pulp of the fruit is compressed, but not destroyed.

How to store dried apples?

To store fruits that are dried in one of the ways described above, it is best to use cloth or paper bags, or cardboard boxes. In such a container, which should be kept in a dry place, dried fruits can be stored for a long time, retaining all their original characteristics and without spoiling. In no case should dried fruits be stored in polyethylene and plastic containers, in which they can “suffocate” without air access, which will lead to the formation of mold on their surface.

When you make preparations for the winter, you want the maximum of vitamins to be preserved in the product. Therefore, I really like to cook homemade dryers. Today I will tell and show how to dry apples in the oven or in the sun.

In preparation, such a preparation is simple and does not require additional costs in the form of sugar, spices or cans.

For this preparation, we need apples in any quantity and sunny weather. 😉 Varieties can be taken different, depending on your preferences.

Wash and dry apples. We remove damaged places, if necessary. Many do not know how to cut apples for drying: thin or thick slices. We cut the fruits in different ways, both in thick pieces and slices no more than 0.5 centimeters. If you have a harvester with a nozzle for chopping vegetables and fruits, then you will cope with the task of thin cutting much faster. A thinner dry, as you know, will dry faster. How we cut the apples this time can be seen in the photo.

We spread the pieces in a thin layer on baking sheets, cover with clean gauze and expose to the sun. We stir every 3-4 hours and after 2-3 days, depending on the weather, thin apple drying will be ready. It will decrease in volume, become dry, but flexible. The sweet aroma of dried apple will appear. If the cut is thick, then the drying process will be delayed by two or even three times.

How to dry apples in the oven

If the weather is not sunny, but cold and wet, or you simply do not have time, then you can use a faster drying method. I will only note that what the oven will be - gas or electric - does not matter.

We prepare apples as when drying in the sun.

First you need to preheat the oven to a temperature of 50-70 degrees. Put the apples on a baking sheet covered with parchment and dry for 3-4 hours.

I must say that despite the fact that drying for the winter, depending on the circumstances, I do it in both ways, but I prefer the first one. The finished product comes out more tasty and fragrant.

When asked how best to store dried apples at home, I will say that I prefer to save them in glass jars with a tightly closed lid, but you can also use clean linen or paper bags.

In winter, delicious amber compote, jelly, stuffing for pies are prepared from dried apples. And you can just eat like that, instead of sweets. After all, it is not only tasty, but also useful.

How to dry apples at home let's talk in this article. Scientists say that people have been eating apples for 165 million years. In Russia, apples were revered and loved from young to old. In central Russia, an apple tree grew in every garden or dacha. The fruits ripen at the end of August, and the owners try to keep the delicacy as long as possible.

Many preparations are made from apples: jam, jam, juice, marshmallow, compote, jam, mousse. But there is a common and easy and cheapest option for storing apples - drying them. At the same time, the product retains its beneficial properties and nutrients, as in fresh apples.

What are the benefits of dried apples?

Scientists confirm that dried fruits, including apples, help fight cancer, cardiovascular problems, chronic kidney and genitourinary diseases. In addition, they tend to cleanse and strengthen blood vessels, reducing the level of bad cholesterol in the blood. Regular intake of food will accelerate the growth of bone tissue in women during menopause, which is the prevention of osteoporosis.

Interesting! Nutritionists advise eating at least 75 grams of dried apples, which are equal to two fresh fruits. They include:

How how to dry apples at home to keep these useful properties? There are several different ways. One of them is oven drying.

How to dry apples in the oven

What varieties to choose?

It is better that these are winter varieties of apples, sour or sweet and sour:

• Anise,
• Antonovka,
• Aport,
• Titovka,
• Borovik,
• Slav.

Summer sweet fruits are also used for drying, and even carrion, but they are dried with a crust, and the final product comes out with a lower quality.

Training

• Apples are processed in portions, approximately half a bucket. So it is better, because they do not have time to darken and oxidize. You can stop the oxidation and keep the color of the lobules with a saline solution (the recipe is presented below).
• The apples are washed and rubbed so that there is no excess moisture left, and drying is faster.
• The next step is to remove the core. This is done in a proven way by cutting into quarters and removing inedible parts. And you can do this with a device in the form of a tube with sharp edges.

Advice! From dried fruits that will be used for compote, the middle can not be cut.

Now we proceed to drying the apples directly.

fruit drying process

• Lay parchment paper on baking sheets.
• Sliced ​​fruits are laid out on it.
• The oven is heated to 80 degrees, apples are placed in it for 30 minutes.
• After that, the temperature drops to 70 degrees.
• After 5 hours, half of the moisture evaporates, and they are turned over to the other side and the temperature is lowered to 50 degrees.
• To obtain well-dried fruits, it is better to leave for another 4 hours, occasionally turning over.

Drying is complete when the apples turn a light brown color. They should not release juice and break when squeezed. It is best to store them in kraft paper bags or canvas bags. The place should be dark and dry, storage temperature is room temperature.

Watch the video! How to dry apples in the oven

in the microwave

Drying in the microwave will significantly speed up the process of preparing dried fruits from apples. The main thing is to choose the right power and cooking time so as not to burn the workpiece.

Drying takes place in two stages:

• At the first stage, you need to put the apples on a plate, preferably in one layer, put in the microwave for 30-40 seconds at a power of 250 W.
• At the next stage, the plate must be removed, the pieces turned over and put for another 3 minutes at 300 W. If it seems that the drying is not ready yet, you can leave it for another 20-30 seconds. Now you can arrange in containers and send for storage.

In an electric dryer

The best choice for drying is an electric dryer. In it, you can harvest fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, medicinal herbs, berries and even meat or fish products for the winter. Now they are gaining popularity, especially for those who have a dacha, because they provide an opportunity fast do drying.

The principle of operation of the electric dryer

This device is easy to use and does not require any special skills. The dryer consists of:

• a plastic container that looks like a saucepan with high sides;
• pallets with through holes where fruits and vegetables are placed;
• there are small nets in the kit to dry berries and plates for marshmallows;
• a lid with holes through which steam escapes;
• base with a compressor that blows hot air to dry food.

The air temperature is regulated, it is added if the product is very juicy.

Drying process

• Sliced ​​apples are stacked in pallets. They can be stacked in a container in several floors.
• For proper drying, it will take 8 hours, at a temperature of 55-60 degrees.
• At the end of the process, you need to make sure that the apples do not release moisture when pressed.
• If they are well dried, they can be put in bags and sent for storage.

Watch the video! Drying apples in a dryer

On the street

To save energy, many people prefer to dry apples. in the sun. This method will not work if the weather is wet and not sunny.

Apples ripen in late summer and early autumn, at this time it often rains. You can start drying in the fresh air, and finish in any other convenient way, in the oven or microwave, for example. There are a couple of ways how best dry apples outside.

1. Sliced ​​fruits are laid out on a grid with cells or on trays. The circles should not be very thick. Apples should be covered with gauze or linen cloth so that dust and pests do not get on them. In the evening, it is better to remove the containers into the room, because the humidity rises at night.
2. You can use the method of drying mushrooms. String apples on a string or skewer and hang them in the sun. Air dry for 4-6 days, then store in a dry place. Avoid moisture.

How to understand that dried apples are ready?

• The skin should darken, and the flesh should not stick. If you press a piece with your finger and it does not crush, then the dried fruits are ready.
• The color of the final product should not surprise. It depends on the type of apple. The flesh of summer fruits is lighter in color and dries out faster. Also, the drying method can affect the color: from greenish-cream to dark brown. But do not be too zealous in drying. Dark, overdried fruits have fewer vitamins than light, properly dried apples.

How to store

When the number of fruits is dried, the question arises of how to properly store them so that the work is not lost.

Dried fruits should be sorted out after drying, suddenly individual pieces will need to be dried. According to the "grandmother's" way, you can pour the whole company into a pillowcase so that they all get the same level of humidity there. They are left like this for a couple of weeks, then sent to cloth bags for storage.

Can be stored in a cardboard box or in paper. It is not recommended to store in plastic bags or in plastic containers so that they do not become moldy.

Watch the video! The easiest way to dry fruit

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