Sweetened Dried Fruit
My dehydrator has failed me. Well, not really, but I can’t seem to create what I want so I’m asking for help from the SurvivalBlog readership. I love the sweetened dehydrated fruit that you can buy in stores, but I am unable to recreate this yummy snack. While I can successfully dehydrate fruit for storage, it has a tendency to look like leather rather than the colorful, tasty treat that you see in this picture. If you can tell me how to re-create this, you will make me a hero to my grand-kids! Leave your ideas in the comments section.- HJL
Sulfur Dioxide is the magic ingredient that keeps the fruit looking good. It isn’t something you probably want to feed to your grand-kids.
The sulfur Dioxide is typically incorporated into the fruit by the burning of sulfur during the dehydration process – not good to breathe. The methods are out there on the web if you are interested.
Use lots of chemicals?
I think to keep dehydrated fruit from turning brown you may need some form of an antioxidant or preservative. Much of the dehydrated fruit you buy probably has a preservative to keeps it from turning brown. You could experiment with using lemon juice or even a vitamin c tablet juice(i.e. grinding a vitamin c tablet and solubilizing it in water. You could then spray the solution on top of the fruit.) There are probably preservatives you could buy to prevent browning, such as sulfites. I have never tried to keep my dehydrated fruit from browning and haven’t attempted these methods yet.
An addition to my above statement. Fruit Fresh is a brand name preservative I have seen in the store before. It contains sugar and ascorbic acid(Vitamin C). Fruit soaked or sprayed with this will keep its color longer. Maybe you could try placing the fruit in a solution of Fruit Fresh prior to dehydrating it.
What you are buying n the store is candied fruit, not dehydrated. I am including a link to candied pineapple, but it works for other types of fruit as well. http://www.food.com/recipe/candied-pineapple-chunks-107034
Ahhh, you want chips. 🙂 Try leaving em in about twice as long.
To get that ‘store bought’ look, try sprinkling a little confectionery sugar over them while they’re still a little damp.
Also have heard bananas are deep fried before being dried, not sure about that. Banana chips leave my mouth sore so I haven’t played with them yet. (Dog likes the ones in the trail mix bags though lol)
Good luck.
Upon rereading I see you’re looking for color. Might try a little ascorbic acid and experiment till you’ve got it close to where you want.
Most packaged dried fruit uses sulphur dioxide for color, bad stuff.
A lot of the fruit you see in bulk foods section etc is “cured” or “glazed” in the dehydration process. Additives like sulfer dioxide, potassium sorbate, additional sugar, oils etc are applied to the fruit. Some fruits have water added back to them up to a point where it is still safe for storage. Some commercially dehydrated fruits might be better described as candied fruit.
For the most part, these adulterations are done to improve appearance and/or as a preservative measure. It will not be easy to replicate the process at home, so I would just stick with simple dehydration and enjoy the wholesomeness.
When we dry apples the slices are first dunked into water with citrix acid. It keeps them from turning brown and they stay white throughout the whole drying process.
Though it will never look as good as the treated fruit in the stores, I get good enough results by dipping/soaking the sliced pieces of fruit in a bowl of water that has a strong amount of lemon juice added. How much? I don’t know. I use the glug-glug method of dilution! Maybe 1 cup lemon juice to 2 quarts of water??
When you use the freeze drying equipment from Harvest Right can you “Pre-treat by dehydrating to some extent first? Would this be a way to save electricity? Would this increase the quantity of food that you could process since some of the processing would be done passively if you used solar? If it could be done what would the product quality be like?
The Freeze dryer makes pretty fruit, but it turns to powder in your mouth. I’m looking at chewy treats and we would use our Weston Dehydrator for that.
The more ripe the fruit …the sweeter the dehydrated fruit
I get good but not ‘Store bought’ results from dipping/tossing cut fruit into a mixture of fruit fresh, lemon juice and additional sugar in about a pint of water in a bowl that holds 6 to 8 cups. I use about 2 teaspoons FF, 1/2 lemon and a couple tablespoons of sugar, then cut the fruit into this, tossing as it fills. When the bowl is almost full, toss and place on the drying racks. If you really want a sugary finish, use more sugar. I just use it for surface color preservation during dehydration.
Some people buy frozen vegetables and just dehydrate them. I was wondering if you could do the same with fruit? Frozen fruit should be treated and therefore stay bright. I realize that fresh fruit is better, but we can’t always get that.
@granny,
I’ve tried that before and it doesn’t work very well. When you freeze the fruit, you damage the cell walls and it turns to mush when it unfreezes. You can freeze dry it’s just fine since it never thaws out but dehydration doesn’t work so well.