Crispy slices of dried apples are incredibly tasty and very healthy. Inside, they remain soft and retain a slight acidity of fresh fruits, in addition, in this way, almost all vitamins are preserved.
If you know in advance how to dry apples for the winter, and make a small supply in the fall, in the cold months you can not only have a bite to eat, but also prepare original desserts or
apple compote. Crispy apple chips are low-calorie, so almost everyone can include them in their diet. So how do you cook them?
How to dry apples in the sun?
The oldest and most useful of all methods is one that involves natural drying under the sun. Before you dry apples at home, you need to carefully inspect the fruits and remove the rotten ones, wash the selected fruits, dry and peel, cut into thin slices or circles. The finer the slices, the less likely the fruit will begin to rot rather than dry. If you peel, the slices will lose shape a little, but their taste will not suffer. Before drying, soak the apples in a weak saline solution for about three minutes, so they will retain a light shade. If you like brown and yellow, this step can be easily omitted. Place the slices on a wooden tray or metal pan and place in the sun so that the fruit has access to fresh air.
A balcony is perfect for such purposes. Turn the apples over several times a day, so the slices will dry more evenly. If the weather is pretty sunny, you will need about four days.
How to dry apples in the oven?
In urban conditions, it is more convenient to dry fruits without the help of nature. Try using an oven for this. Before you dry apples at home, you need to select, wash and cut the fruits as thinly as possible, not more than eight millimeters in thickness. Cover the baking sheet with baking paper, spread the resulting slices and turn on the oven fifty degrees. Gradually increase the temperature to eighty degrees, then reduce it back. Turn apples every hour, and keep the oven door ajar. To make sweet apples, you can soak them before drying in sugar syrup.
It will take about eight hours to fully cook the apple chips.
A few more ways to dry apples at home
Try a microwave. This is a pretty quick way, it only takes a few minutes. Wash and cut the fruits, put them on a plate covered with natural cloth, turn on the microwave at low power for two minutes. If the apples are not quite ready, dry a little more. Alternatively, you can use a special dryer in which the fruit needs to be dried for six hours, first at eighty degrees, and then at sixty. Knowing how to dry apples at home, you can delight your family with mouth-watering apple chips, even when the fruit is out of season.