Food preservation is a good housekeeping art which has been with us for hundreds of years. The following tips and advice will show you how best to prepare fruit and vegetables for drying.
1) When picking fruits and vegetables for the drying process it is important that you choose fresh produce, otherwise the decomposition of the food itself may have already gone too far.
2) When you are happy with the choices you’ve made with regards to the food itself, it is time to wash, peel and deseed them. Whilst you’re doing this it’s a good idea to scour each piece of fruit or vegetable for any damaged patches. If you do find any – and the likelihood is that you will – just cut them out with the peeler. When you are completely happy move on to step three.
3) Step three of this food preservation process is where you cut the individual fruit/veg in small pieces of roughly a ΒΌ of an inch. These small pieces will improve the efficiency of the process; this is due to the small surface areas of the pieces, the smaller the surface area, the less moisture they’ll contain, thus they’ll dry out quicker.
4) If you are drying vegetables then the fourth step you’ll need to follow to achieve the desired affect is to boil them in water. This will help kill off those enzymes which causes the vegetables to rot, along with creating the added affect of adding colour and flavour to them
When you are drying fruit, step four is slightly different. The fruit you choose will have to submerged in a lemon juice and water solution. Doing this will stop the fruit from losing their colour and turning brown
5) When the four – above steps – have been followed, it’s time to place the fruit and/or vegetables on a drying rack and dry them out.