Dried fruits are a useful way to enrich the body with the necessary trace elements. For thousands of years dry apples, pears, plums and apricots save a person from vitamin deficiency. Let's talk dried apricots. Or rather, on how to choose dried apricots that are beneficial and meet the proud title of dried fruit.
The benefits of dried apricots
Before shedding light on the beneficial properties of the product, recall: dried apricots - dried apricot. Enjoying it, a person receives strengthening immunity and improving the functioning of the heart muscle. It is useful to eat dried fruits, mixed with nuts and real honey. Such a tool has long been considered reviving, giving strength and strengthening the general condition.
Here are just a few points that benefit the body:
- A decoction of the aforementioned dried fruit helps to remove excess fluid from the body.
- Dried apricots removes a certain amount of cholesterol (with regular use).
- The activity of the endocrine system is regulated if there are dried apricot fruits.
- It is believed that carotenoids, which are part of the pulp of the fruit, support normal vision.
- For hypertensive patients, the use of dried apricots means the normalization of pressure.
But before choosing dried apricots in order to enrich your own body with the necessary useful elements, remember to consult with a specialist.
The use of dried apricot
Use this dried fruit in the preparation of salads. Adding a small amount of fruit makes the snack more interesting and enriches it with new flavor combinations. Useful dried desserts are made from dried apricots.
In baking, it is also quite popular: many people like dried apricot filling. For those who pay attention to proper nutrition, dried apricots is an excellent addition to breakfast - oatmeal or rice porridge. Throughout the day, you can use several dried apricot fruits for a healthy snack.
The process of drying dried apricots
But for the body to receive more benefits with this dried fruit than harmful effects, you need to know how to choose dried apricots. Sadly, today the chemical industry has even invaded such a seemingly harmless way of harvesting fruits as drying or drying them. Compare two drying methods.
Classic (useful way)
Ripe, juicy fruits, which have absorbed all the power of the southern sun, are harvested and inspected in order to select dried apricots, as has been customary for centuries - without rot and other unpleasant surprises. By removing apricots unsuitable for drying, only those that deserve to become a healthy product are left. They are laid out right in the sun, after covering with a cloth from the invasion of insects. Apricots will be in such conditions until all moisture leaves the fruit.
The finished product most often has a dark brown color. It happens that on the counter there is dried apricots of a very pale, yellowish hue. It is obtained in the same way, but from a different variety of fruits. To choose it correctly, it is necessary to remember that it is the pale shade (in the case of yellow dried apricots) that is considered normal, but not orange - a sign of the second method of drying apricot.
Modern expedited way
Not quite ripe fruits are picked, soaked in a special solution (sulfur dioxide). Then the apricots are dried in huge ovens. The output is dried fruit in a pleasant shade (bright orange). Such dried apricots have a glossy surface and sourish taste, which is endowed with dioxide.
The principle of such preparation of dried fruit does not leave useful substances even a chance to get into the human body. But sulfur dioxide, which is found in abundance in the bowels of dried apricots prepared using modern technology, will invade the body, disrupting its work. The accumulation of this substance is fraught with serious consequences.
How to choose dried apricots without chemicals
A photo of healthy dried apricots is strikingly different from beautiful.
- In real life, the first thing that allows you to reject a product is appearance. Dried apricots should not have bright shades. Today, some Turkish producers offer brown dried apricots. An inexperienced buyer often comes across such a trick. But in addition to color, it is important to pay attention to the general condition of dried fruits. The main thing is the lack of suspicious shine.
- By the way, a brilliant product can be obtained by lubricating the surface with vegetable oil. In more severe cases, it can be absolutely any fat or worse - paraffin.
- Sugar dried apricots are not what we need. If such has come across to you in the market, feel free to leave it. She is not a dried fruit in the full sense of the word. This, in fact, is a sweet candy based on dried apricots. It is sprinkled with powdered sugar or soaked in syrup.
- Aroma - without a wine loop.
- There is no debris or insects in a quality product. After the dried apricots have been soaked, a lot of dirt should not precipitate.
- It is better not to purchase sliced dried fruit: it is likely that such dried apricots were made from spoiled apricots, which were cut and dried.
Now that it has become clear how to choose dried apricots without chemicals, you can go to the market.