Dried apricot, although inferior in content of nutrients to fresh apricot, still contains more of them than jam, jam or compote. Apricots are perishable fruits, drying is one of the best ways to preserve them, and it does not require a lot of money.
Apricots are perishable fruits, drying is one of the best ways to preserve them
Before you start drying apricots, you should decide what you want to get in the end. Does the question seem strange? Naturally, dried apricots. Do you know what dried apricot is actually called, and dried apricots are just one of its varieties.
The name depends on the integrity of the fruit and its size. Small dried apricots with pits are called apricots, large ones are called shepala. If the seed is squeezed out through the hole near the stalk with minimal disruption of the fruit, then when dried, the result is kaisa. And if individual apricot halves are dried, naturally without pits, then this is dried apricots. Connoisseurs distinguish between a product made from cut fruits and those broken without the help of a knife.
Video about homemade dried apricots
But it is not customary to distinguish ready-made dried apricots by what variety they are made from.
However, when choosing apricots suitable for obtaining a quality product, the variety is of great importance. For dried apricots, large, not too juicy fruits with dense pulp and a high sugar content are suitable; the stone should be easy to remove. Many Central Asian varieties have such qualities, some of which contain more than 20% sugar, but even in the middle zone you can choose suitable ones with sufficient sugar content of about 10%. The weight of properly selected, dense apricots is reduced by 5-6 times when dried.
Fully ripe, undamaged fruits collected from the tree are selected; the rejected ones can be dried in the form of apricots or sear. It is advisable to wash the apricots intended for dried apricots so thoroughly that the finished dried fruit can be consumed unwashed, otherwise it will lose some of its nutrients. The fruit is divided into halves and the pit is removed.
The fruit is divided into halves and the pit is removed.
In terms of vitamin content, dried apricots are somewhat poorer than apricots, but this healthy delicacy has another advantage: it can be given a very beautiful, juicy, amber color. When producing a commercial product, the effect is usually achieved by treating prepared apricots with sulfur dioxide. The method, although prescribed by technology, is considered not entirely environmentally friendly. In order to obtain dried apricots at home, we can recommend more acceptable ways to preserve color.
If the bright appearance of the future dried apricot is important to the manufacturer, then before drying, he puts the prepared apricot halves in a colander and keeps it over steam for 5 - 10 minutes, depending on the hardness of the fruit; in some cases, instead of steaming, the fruit can even be boiled for 5 minutes. After this, place the apricots on a clean cloth to drain off excess moisture. The dried fruit is not as spectacular as when processed with sulfur, but still brighter than dull, not steamed dried apricots.
To preserve color, you can soak washed fruits in a solution of citric acid.
Also, to preserve color, you can soak washed fruits in a solution of citric acid, prepared at the rate of 1 teaspoon per liter of water.
The most gentle option, which produces the healthiest dried fruits, is to dry the fruits directly on the tree, this is how you get apricots from suitable varieties. It is also advisable to dry dried apricots in the most natural conditions possible; this requires a ventilated, unshaded place (yard, balcony or roof) and hot sunny weather. There should be no road with exhaust fumes or dust nearby .
The halves of the fruits are first kept in the shade, preferably in the wind or draft, after 3 - 4 hours they are laid out with cuts up, separately, so that they do not stick together, on wooden grids or folded into willow wickers and exposed to the sun. You can use a metal grid, but be sure to lay a thin cloth on it. At night, the workpieces are removed indoors, the same in case of temporary bad weather. After a few days, the slices will wilt, shrink in size and become non-sticky, then they can be arranged more closely. Depending on the temperature and properties of the fruit, drying lasts one to two weeks.
It is advisable to dry dried apricots in the most natural conditions possible.
Some manufacturers string apricot halves onto a thread and pull it horizontally. If the fruits are not too juicy and dense enough so as not to bunch up and stick together, then this method is acceptable. Softer apricots can be strung on twigs or thin wooden skewers, and placed at an angle, inserting one end into specially drilled holes. In areas where winds often blow in hot weather, fruits strung on threads or twigs dry out even in the shade.
A problem that often accompanies the “old-fashioned” method is insects - ants and flies. Practitioners advise frequently changing the location of the product in order to “deceive” the ants, but this requires a large available area and constant monitoring. It is easier to place the apricot on a table whose legs are immersed in bowls of water. To protect against flies, the fruits can be covered with gauze; if the sun is hot enough, this is acceptable.
Another option is to adapt an old double window frame for a solar dryer, replacing the glass with a plastic mesh. Such a device, suspended in a horizontal position, provides high-quality drying and protection from insects.
For those who do not have a suitable area for solar drying of fruit or prefer to receive a batch of dried apricots within one day, it is possible to use household appliances. The best modern dryers are equipped with a powerful heater, a fan, a tray system that increases the usable area, and a thermostat. Manufacturers are constantly improving their products, as a result, the process of preparing dried fruits is becoming more and more simple and convenient, and the result is of higher quality.
Place the slices on trays separately so that they do not stick together.
Features of working with one or another device are indicated in the attached instructions, but you need to take into account the basic rules for handling apricots. Place the slices on trays separately so that they do not stick together. During the first and last 2 - 3 hours, set the temperature to 45 - 50 ° C, in the middle of the process - up to 60 ° C. Drying duration is 8 – 10, less often – up to 12 hours.
If you don’t have a special dryer, you can successfully use a regular oven, but you have to keep the process under constant control. Due to the lack of ventilation, the oven is maintained at a higher temperature, 60–65 °C, and the door is opened slightly from time to time to remove moisture; towards the end of drying, the temperature is lowered slightly. From the moment they are half-ready, you need to monitor the condition of the fruit so as not to dry them out.
Video about making dried apricots at home
How to determine the readiness of dried apricots?
To find out that your dried apricots are ready, just check them according to three indicators:
- To the touch. In properly dried dried apricots, about 10% of the original amount of water remains; it is dry, but elastic, pleasant to the touch and slightly heavier than overdried dried apricots - hard, making a dry, hard sound when tapped.
- Place in water. A sure indicator of good quality is the ability to swell in hot water. This product retains about 30% of the vitamins contained in fresh apricots and up to 80% of the original minerals.
- By color. Dried apricots prepared without chemical treatment are moderately yellow, orange or dull brown; too rich a color is not an indicator of quality and does not attract informed consumers.
Dried apricots cooked without chemical treatment are moderately yellow, orange or dull brown.
Sometimes when cooking at home, apricot slices dry unevenly. To level them, they are placed for several days in a closed cardboard box or wooden vessel for the so-called “sweating”, while the moisture is evenly distributed throughout the entire mass of the product. Dried apricots can be stored in the same boxes or wooden jars, placed in a cool, dry room, or hung in a bag made of thick fabric. High-quality dried apricots can be stored for up to two years.
In order for dried apricots to be beneficial, it is important to prepare them following the technology. This is the only way it will be full of vitamins and microelements, unlike store-bought ones.
Useful properties of dried apricots
- Dried apricots are a dietary product that is often recommended to be added to the diet of anyone who wants to say goodbye to excess weight. Despite the high calorie content, dried apricots are digested just fine.
- Dried apricots have a lot of potassium, which makes them very healthy for vegetarians.
- Dried apricots also contain a lot of vitamin A, everyone’s favorite retinol, which is responsible for the proper functioning of many organs, and also helps maintain the youth and radiance of the skin.
- Dried apricots contain a lot of pectin and organic acids, which help remove heavy metals from the body.
How to make dried apricots at home?
To begin with, it is worth selecting large apricot fruits. These must be high-quality, ripe, absolutely fresh fruits. After selection, wash the apricots and remove the pit.
To preserve the natural and rich shade of dried apricots, you need to hold the apricots over boiling water for 10-15 minutes. Next, we lay it out on a clean cloth or thick napkins in order to free the fruits from moisture.
The process of preparing dried fruit itself is the removal of any moisture from the fruit, in other words, drying. Thus, microbes cease to exist on the surface of the dried fruit, and accordingly do not multiply.
Despite the fact that the fruit undergoes a certain heat treatment, it retains about 30% of vitamins and about 90% of microelements, which makes the delicacy very valuable for the body.
Now let's move on to the cooking process:
Dried apricots can be obtained at home in two ways: outdoors and in the oven.
With the first method, it is important to take into account that the sun is too scorching. The drying process takes approximately 2 weeks. This option is suitable for owners of private houses. So, if the weather is favorable, apricots are dried during the day and stored at night in places protected from moisture.
Harvesting homemade dried apricots is the best way to preserve apricots for the winter. After the process is completed, up to 30% of vitamins and up to 80% of microelements remain in the dried fruit, which makes it indispensable in the cold season. In addition, dried apricots are very tasty; they are perfect for adding to desserts and as an independent treat for tea.
In order to end up with tasty, sweet and meaty dried apricots, you first need to choose the right apricots. Small wild fruits are not suitable for harvesting for the winter; all that will be left of them is the skin, and besides, they can taste bitter and contain hard veins. It is best to use “cultivated” apricot varieties. The fruits should be large, fleshy, not overripe and easily separated from the stone.
Preparing apricots for drying
First of all, you need to thoroughly wash the apricot fruits, divide them into halves and dry them on a towel. You need to use only perfectly clean fruits without traces of pests. If there are dark spots or spots on the skin, it is better to eat them immediately; in the finished dried apricots, these spots will be hard and can ruin the taste.
The finished dried apricots turn out to be quite dark; to preserve their amber color, there are several pre-treatment methods:
- Dip the apricot halves into boiling, well-sugared water for 3-5 minutes. This will add extra sweetness to the finished product and help maintain color. Only very dense fruits can be processed in this way; soft ones will simply fall apart or dry out to a thin skin.
- Dip the halves for 5-10 minutes in water with citric acid (1 tsp per liter of water).
After all these manipulations, the apricots must be dried well on a towel again.
Different ways to dry dried apricots at home
On open air
You need to place the mesh on which the fruit will dry in the center of a large piece of gauze, spread the fruit evenly on the mesh and tie all the edges of the gauze into a knot. The size of the gauze should be chosen so that the distance from the apricot to the node is 20-25 cm, this is necessary for better ventilation and prevention of souring of the fruit. Next, the entire structure is hung by the knot and dried for 10-15 days, depending on the air temperature.
If there is no net or the ability to hang it somewhere, you can simply lay out the future dried apricots on a tray or plate and cover with gauze, but this increases the likelihood of souring.
Every evening, trays and nets should be brought into a dry, warm room so that dew does not settle on them.
In the oven
It is easy to dry apricots in an ordinary home oven. This method has its advantages:
- there is no access to the workpieces for flies, wasps and ants;
- Drying time is only 9-10 hours.
The apricot halves are laid out on a baking sheet and placed in an oven preheated to 65 degrees for the required time. After 8 hours, you can start checking the readiness of the dried apricots; when they reach a suitable state, you must turn off the oven and do not remove the dried fruits until they have cooled completely.
In an electric dryer
The easiest and most logical way to dry dried apricots is an electric dryer. The fruit halves need to be laid out on a dryer grid, turned on for a couple of hours at a temperature of 50-60 degrees, and then raised to 70-80 degrees. The entire drying process takes about 40 hours.
How to properly store dried apricots at home
In order to eat a sweet and healthy delicacy in winter, it must not only be prepared correctly, but also stored correctly. To prevent dried apricots from turning sour and spoiling, it is best to store them in tied linen bags in a dry, dark place. You should not use plastic bags and plastic containers for this, as it can become moldy and spoiled in them.
Video about how else you can dry dried apricots at home
I love apricots in any form, especially dried apricots. But the one sold in the store does not inspire confidence in me with its composition. So I decided to make it myself.
Ingredients for “Dried apricots a la dried apricots”:
Recipe for “Dried apricots a la dried apricots”:
Wash the apricots and remove the pits. The ingredients indicated that 1 kg of sugar per 1 kg of apricots, this is not true (I just didn’t know how to indicate it differently). 1 kg of sugar is enough for several kilograms of apricots, the main thing is that they fit in 1 liter of syrup.
Then the apricots need to be boiled in sugar syrup, otherwise they will turn brown, and this way they will retain their color (although they will not be as bright as store-bought ones) and will be sweeter. Dissolve 1 kg of sugar in 1 liter of boiling water. Place our halves there and boil for 5-10 minutes. Leave them in this syrup for a day.
After a day, remove the apricots and let the syrup drain. This cannot be done in a colander or sieve. Since apricots at this stage are very tender and can spread with one movement. I came up with this method for myself: I carefully place our apricots along the edge of a deep plate.
To make the plates take up less space, I made several of these designs :).
After the juice has stopped flowing from the apricot, you can proceed, strictly speaking, to the main action - drying. I dry it in a dryer (in fact, I bought it primarily for apricots). Place the apricot halves on the drying racks in one layer, it’s best that they don’t even touch each other. Place the filled racks in the dryer, close and set the temperature. I first dried it at 50 degrees, and then dried it at 45 degrees. It took approximately 10-15 hours. It’s just that some were ready after 10 hours, while others still had to be dried. To make it not so hot in the apartment, I put everything in the kitchen to dry overnight and closed the door.
When I was just looking for ways to prepare dried apricots, I found on the Internet different ways to determine the readiness of the product. They wrote that they should be soft (but they are not hard at first) and different percentages of residual moisture were indicated (to be honest, I don’t know how to measure the moisture content of products at home). Therefore, as a result of several experiments, I determined the degree of readiness for myself as follows: soft-elastic, and most importantly, not sticky to the touch.
From the original 2.5 kg of raw apricots, I got about 0.5 kg of dried apricots. I store them in a glass jar with an airtight lid in the refrigerator.
Yes, I almost forgot. The syrup in which the apricots were boiled did not disappear either. I boiled it again (by the way, there was still some apricots left in it) and sealed it in a jar. In winter you can breed and drink compote.
If you don’t have a dryer, you can do everything with improvised means. Those who have a dacha or a house in the village dry it in the sun on baking sheets, however, it will take several days, and there may also be various troubles in the form of flies and birds, or just rain. So you need to cover it with gauze or cotton cloth. Or you can dry it at home in the oven: spread it on a mesh or baking sheet and dry it first at a temperature of 50 degrees, then 65 and dry it again at 60 degrees. True, I still like to dry it more at lower temperatures (it seems that more vitamins will be preserved this way, and this is after boiling). There is one more condition - the oven must be slightly open. To be honest, in the heat we have here, I consider this method a feat.
This recipe is part of the "Cooking Together - Culinary Week" campaign. Discussion of cooking on the forum -
Apricots contain many beneficial properties. Unfortunately, it is not possible to keep these fruits fresh for a long time, so housewives who want to give their loved ones a piece of summer in winter prepare jams and preserves. However, only a few realize that the greatest number of beneficial properties are preserved in dried apricots. Now you will learn how to dry apricots at home.
Many are sure that dried apricot is called. In fact, dried apricot has many names depending on the size of the fruit, as well as the presence of a seed in it. Remember: a small dried apricot with a pit is an apricot, a large one is a sear. If apricot pits are squeezed out through a hole near the stalk, then this is nothing more than kaisa, but a dried apricot divided into halves is dried apricots. It is the creation of dried apricots that we will deal with today.
Selecting an apricot suitable for quality dried apricots
High-quality dried apricots are obtained only from apricots suitable for this purpose. For drying, it is necessary to take ripe fruits. If you want to get just such a product (and we’re sure you won’t agree to anything less), then prepare sweet, large-sized, not too juicy apricots with dense flesh and an easy-to-remove pit.
Preparing apricots for drying
We thoroughly wash the fruits suitable for making dried apricots. This is necessary so that the finished product does not need additional washing, since it will reduce the amount of useful substances. Divide the apricot into halves. We remove the bone.
Apricot drying
After the fruits suitable for dried apricots have been prepared, you can proceed to the main stage - drying.
Dried apricots are most beneficial when dried naturally.. Place the apricot halves, cut side up, on a metal wire rack covered with cloth and place in a shady, well-ventilated place for 3–4 hours. After this, expose the apricot to the sun. At night, apricots need to be brought indoors. Depending on the weather and the characteristics of the fruit, drying may take up to two weeks.
Some people, instead of drying apricots on a wire rack, string them on a string, which is then pulled horizontally in a sunny, well-ventilated place. You can string apricot halves onto twigs or skewers and dry them that way.
If you do not want to spend a lot of time preparing dried apricots, you can dry the apricot in the oven. For this Place the apricot halves on a baking sheet and place in the oven preheated to 60 degrees.. The oven door should be opened periodically to remove excess moisture. Toward the end of drying, the temperature should be lowered.
How to get dried apricots of a beautiful amber color
In order to get dried apricots of a beautiful amber color, before directly drying, you need to put the apricot halves in a colander and hold them over steam for 5 - 10 minutes (if fruits are too hard, you can even boil them for a couple of minutes). After this, place the apricots on a clean cloth to get rid of excess moisture.
Dried apricots turn out beautiful if, before drying, you keep the apricot in a solution prepared in the proportion of 1 teaspoon of citric acid per liter of water.
What a quality dried apricot it is!
Consistency. High-quality dried apricots are elastic, pleasant to the touch, and retain up to 10% of the original amount of water.
Color. The fact that the dried apricots presented in front of you are of high quality is indicated by its moderate yellow, orange or dull brown color. Remember: rich color is not always an indicator of quality.
Loading...
