Dried fruits - "pills of the sun", as they are called, are considered by many to be a very useful product. And rightly so, they contain a lot of wonderful substances, especially necessary for a person during periods of absence of seasonal fruits. Here are trace elements, and pectins, and vitamins with antioxidants, carotene.
However, when buying dried fruits for the good of the cause, sometimes you can buy along with them and serious problems for your body, because they are often treated with preservatives.
It is necessary
- Dried apricots
- Raisins
- Prunes
- Dates
Instructions
Step 1
Dried apricots
Good quality dried apricots are halves of ripe apricots, dried in a natural way, without the use of chemical preservatives. It should be of medium hardness, jovolno elastic (not soft!), Have a faded yellow, dark yellow, brown color.
Kaisa - dried apricots, from which the stone has been removed.
Apricot - dried small apricots with unremoved pits.
Most often on the market there is kaisa (we call it incorrectly dried apricots) of bright orange color, very soft, sometimes having a shine. Looks great (pictured), as does anything processed with preservatives. Yes, unfortunately, this is an ostentatious quality. Such a product is obtained by pretreating apricots with sorbic acid, sulfur dioxide to give them color, safety from insects and bacteria.
A dried product of high quality will never become brighter than its natural color.
Step 2
Raisins
All that concerns dried apricots can be attributed to raisins. Naturally dried raisins can be:
- small light yellow (not golden!) pitted;
- dark blue without pits;
- light olive medium in size with one pit;
- dark brown, large, sweet with a few seeds.
Good raisins, or hard, or moderately dense, but not soft! The highest quality one that, falling, knocks like pebbles.
The common bright golden shiny raisins are also treated like dried apricots with sulfur dioxide and dyes. In the photo - raisins, dried in an unnatural way!
Step 3
Prunes
According to technology, prunes are dried plum fruits - hungarian (dark blue elongated).
It is very difficult to buy high-quality prunes. By the way, it looks inconspicuous, dense, albeit elastic, wrinkled, with a slightly bluish bloom, without a greasy sheen.
As a rule, the prunes that we are used to seeing on the shelves: soft, sweet, shiny, have nothing to do with a healthy product. It is done as follows: unripe plums are soaked in caustic to soften the dense skin, dried in a special preservative "liquid smoke", soaked in glucose syrup and treated with corn oil. Who needs such a set of chemistry?
The photo shows an example of chemically processed fruits.
Step 4
Dates
Dates are also often treated with glucose syrup, sometimes they even write about it on the fruit label. It is advisable not to buy such a product. Give preference to dried dates, you must admit that they are good without sweeteners.
In the photo there are dates blanched in syrup.
A quality product has a dense "dried" consistency and a dry matte surface.
