Homemade Dried Fruit is one of my favorite snacks. I like it because I know exactly what's in it...100% whole fruit. The kind of dried fruit that you get at the store usually has additional ingredients, such as preservatives, salt, and sugar. These ingredients are added to "enhance" flavor and prolong shelf life.
Dehydrating fruit is a pretty simple process. All you need is a piece of fruit, a knife, and a dehydrator! In this blog post, I dehydrated white peaches that I picked up from a local farmer's market in Minneapolis.
First, peel the peaches (if they are ripe, they should peel pretty easily and then slice uniformly. I did mine at about 1/4 of an inch. Just make sure all of the slices are about the same width! Finally, plop them on a tray a viola. you can add a squeeze of lemon/lime juice, but it wasn't necessary for these peaches!
I turned my dehydrator to high, which is about 155 degrees, and dehydrated for 6-7 hours. Every hour I flipped the peaches over to prevent sticking.
How gorgeous are these peaches!
It's amazing how much the fruit shrinks down after it is dehydrated. Interesting fact: a fresh peach has the same exact nutritional value as a dehydrated peach!
-Lee
Have you ever used a dehydrator? If so- what did you dehydrate?
