Drying sour and sweet and sour apple varieties is a practical method for the subsequent preparation of compotes in winter. When dried, sweet apples lose their flavor. Housewives are often interested in how to cut apples for drying.
Picking and cutting apples
Before you start drying apples, you need to prepare the necessary equipment for the process: buckets, a knife and large bowls. In addition, rubber finger caps need to be purchased at the pharmacy. If this is not done, then there is a risk of getting small wounds on the fingers.
Substandard, slightly rotten apples with a wormhole are suitable as raw materials for drying. During cleaning, all areas damaged in one way or another are removed. Slicing apples for drying is done in portions. The best option is to slice half a bucket of fruit at a time. This takes about ten to fifteen minutes of time. However, the sliced fruits already begin to darken and oxidize at this time. As a result, apples lose their external presentation, but, despite this, they are quite suitable for home consumption.
The apples are cut into relatively equal slices, only then the apples will dry evenly. The thickness of each slice should be no more than five millimeters. You can cut into slices and thinner.
Tips for Drying Apples Properly
To dry apples properly, you need to follow some basic guidelines.
Apples of the same ripeness and good quality are usually selected for drying. The fruit slices must be the same thickness and the same size. The apples are kept in salted water so that the fruits do not darken and are better stored. The drying of apples itself is necessarily carried out in the sun. No need to dry apples on cloudy days.
Apples cut into circles are most conveniently dried under a canopy, on a string. The best way to dry apples is under gauze on plywood boards, on a tin roof, under a canopy - in any ventilated area. Sliced apples are laid out in one layer. During drying, they need to be altered every day. In this case, you need to ensure that the fruits do not stick together.
In sunny and windy weather, apples take a week to ten days to dry. If apples are dried in a closed dark room, then the time until they are ready increases. Properly dried apple slices will subsequently have a yellowish color. They will retain their elasticity, will not crumble and sap.
Dried apples are stored in linen bags, cardboard boxes or glass jars under a lid. Be sure to make sure that the apples do not absorb other odors. To determine the readiness of a dried apple, break one slice in half. If juice flows from the fruit, then the apples need to be dried again. If the slice does not break, then, most likely, the apple is overdried.
