Drying Apples at Home for Winter SweetnessDrying apples in your oven is quite an easy way to get some valuable stored fruit from your apple crop. Dried apples are delicious and retain a good proportion of the goodness of the fruit. They can be used in a number of ways and make an excellent quick, energy-boosting snack. Energy efficiency of drying applesHow energy efficient drying apples is, you will need to work out for yourself. It depends upon your individual cooker and how effective it is at using energy to make heat for drying.
One option I've used is to use the cooker to heat the room and dry apples at the same time. That way, we save on other heating costs. It's a nice way to keep warm at the weekends, when people are about the house. You can always use the additional heat to dry clothes in the kitchen, if you have room, too. You can also dry apples above a radiator or another heat source. If you let the process take too long, your apples can become oxidised (rust appears on them.) You lose some of the goodness when this happens. If you are in the enviable position of having a range - such as an Aga or Raeburn, then using your cooker to slowly dry out fruits is a sensible option. If you have a wood burning stove or similar, you may be able to use it for drying apples and other fruits. Pick reasonably sound apples and clean, core and peel them. Hold the apple so that the core hole is parallel to the chopping board. Using a fine, sharp knife, slice the apples thinly into apple rings. Don't worry if some spare pieces are not perfect rings. They can still be dried and used. Cut the apple rings so that they are two to three mm wide or slimmer. This ensures reasonably fast drying. If you are hanging your apple rings on strings or threading them onto skewers or similar you may need to cut your rings slightly bigger. Drying apples in the oven is done best if you have plenty of meta drying racks or perforated trays. I've used a non-stick pizza tray and some cooling racks. I've also pressed into service some old grill racks from a microwave. The grill tray from the cooker can also be used - or any other clean metal food rack. I also use enameled trays on which to support the drying racks. This way all the small bits that drop through the bars get caught and can carry on drying. With the aid of racks, trays and the like it is possible to make use of most of the volume of the oven when drying your fruit.
As the apples and other fruits dry you can bunch them up more closely and fit more on the trays. It's also good to turn the fruit for more even drying. Drying fruit does give off moisture. It can be beneficial to open the oven door some. You also may need to mop the floor to stop moisture from drying apples accumulating under the oven door. TemperatureWhen drying apples, it's best to select a low temperature. If the temperature is too low you may find that the apple rings start to brown a bit. You can avoid this by starting them off at a higher temperature and then lowering the temperature once the fruit has dried on the outside. If you are using the oven for cooking at a higher temperature you can put your apple rings into the bottom of the oven and any unused space. This works OK if the temperature of the oven is not too high overall. I've dried apples successfully when other food has been cooking on gas mark 5, for example. You have to watch more carefully and you may get rather more bronzed apple rings. To bronze or not to bronze?Apple rings dried in this manner can come out in a variety of colours from pale flesh-coloured to a deep bronze. A light bronzing is nice because the sugars in the fruit are caramelised - and very tasty. Darker fruit may start to become bitter as the caramel becomes too pronounced. You are also likely to lose a lot of the nutritional value. Sweet and sourOne of the great things about drying fruit at home is that you can use up excess cooking apples. As the fruit dries and shrinks the sugars become more concentrated. Fruit which would be wincingly sour with no added sugar becomes quite noticeably sweet but with a sour tang to it which is very pleasant.We've been using up lots of our cookers in this way as there is a limit to how many apple pies one can eat in a season! Books about drying fruitI have to recommend Bob Flowerdew's Grow Your Own, Eat Your Own - Guide to Making the Most of your Garden Produce All Year Round
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which contains details of drying apples and making fruit leathers. It's an inspirational book but not always the best for readability. There are loads of new ways to use your fruits and veg, all well tied in with growing tips and methods.
