Dehydrating Transparents

Those wonderful Transparent Apples that are so delicate make very tasty dried apples. I have been trying to work up a batch in the evening and letting the dehydrator do its thing during the night.

Back when I first began dehydrating fruits and vegetables, many many moons ago, I believed the how-to books and sprinkled each slice with products like Fruit Fresh, ascorbic acid or bathed them in lemon water. All in an effort to keep them from doing what they do naturally when cut and exposed to air.

Their natural browning is not a sign of decay and discouraging the process adds unwanted flavors to the finished project. So I do not use any kind of inhibitors to the fruit and let them turn whatever color they wish.

I do prefer to dehydrate them at a cooler temperature than most of those seemingly knowledgeable books tend to hover around the 135 degree setting. When I have the option, which is mostly time or patience driven, I set the dehydrator at about 115 to 120 and let the longer drying time evenly dry out the slices.

So far, I have two full gallons bags of dehydrated Transparent Apples. I’ll have to work quickly to salvage those apples still on the tree. At this stage they ripen fast and Mike is quick to pick up any fallen apples to dice up for the cows because if they fall from the tree they are too bruised to use for my purposes.

I try to spread the goodness of the dried apples around. Those local customers who purchase beef right from the farm are recipients of a few extra goodies with their orders. Transparent Apples are one of the more popular by their comments and it seems that the slow setting for drying is the best way to go.