An apple a day...

H:
One of today's projects was getting the food dehydrators running.  We have been away from home for a few days and were not able to keep them going while we were gone.  Our cat isn't quite skilled enough to get the food out of the trays and into bags so we left them empty.

This morning we grabbed a bag of apples from the local orchard and I sliced while Dave spread out the slices on the trays.  We have a system and it doesn't take us very long to fill the 2 dehydrators.  In 24 hours we'll have lovely, crispy apple chips that taste amazingly like... well... apples.  If we hike for 6 months and would like an apple a day each... we have to dry 360 apples.  Today we put up 20 but at the moment I have no idea how many we've already done.  Probably 200.  Maybe it will be an apple a day between the two of us!

I've had quite a few dried foods that are rather disgusting.  We like to dry bananas as well as apples because bananas taste so good when they're crisp and free of the "normal" commercial processing.  I always wondered why dried bananas tasted like funky french fries, reason is bananas are often flash fried then dried and sugared.  Blah!

Our method for dried bananas is pretty simple:

Start with ripe bananas... I mean really ripe.  In fact, those super ripe discounted bananas you pass by at the grocery store... just keep on walking because we love those for dehydrating and buy every last one in the store which usually runs to 40 bananas at a time.  Bananas are best to dehydrate when they are ripe and full of lovely tasting sugar. 

Partially peel the banana.  I leave about 1/3 the peel on because it helps to hold the slices in place while I slice and makes the transport to the tray super easy.

We like our bananas dried crispy and slicing to 1/8th an inch works best for this.  

Place in drier and forget for 24 hours.  

A single banana weighs in at around 147 grams (about 5 oz.).  This sandwich bag of dried bananas weighs 127 grams and holds about 4 bananas.  In the end the weight is reduced by around 1/5th (a banana shrinks to about 1 ounce).   

The last time we dried bananas we experimented with a honey/water glaze and then an agave nectar/water glaze.  We dipped the bananas in the glaze before drying.  Both attempts yielded a very good snack but we didn't notice any difference in the browning or not browning of the bananas.  Then again we don't worry too much about how they look.

With our apples it's a little bit more involved and by that I mean one extra step:  

We quarter the apple, slice the core out at an angle, then thin slice (again 1/8th an inch if possible).  

The apples then soak for a bit in a bath of acid/water.  Our favorite is diluted pineapple juice drained from a can of pineapple chunks (we usually eat the pineapple before we get started otherwise I keep eating slices of apple!).  

Next the slices are spread on the trays and again... 24 hours later they're ready.  The pineapple juice adds a nice bite to the apple but lemon juice and water works just fine too.  The acid also helps to keep the apples from browning a great deal before they dry.  

Our apples are about 175 grams (just over 6 ounces) each.  When dried a little more than 2 fit in a sandwich bag.  This bag of 2 apples weighs 45 grams which means they are reduced to 1/12th their original weight (about 3/4 of an ounce)!

The hardest part about drying the fruit is waiting until the hike to eat it.  Well... it doesn't all make it to storage.  We have to do quality control inspections right?!  

We don't expect to be able to dry all the food that we'll need for the trip.  There's just not the time or the space in our RV.  Here's a shot of the dehydrator trays spread apart to aid cooling before bagging: 

The food we dry will be supplemented with various foods.  I've looked into both dehydrated and freeze dried.  There's always peanut butter too!