Thursday, October 2, 2008

Preserving Gala Apples for Winter

The fall apples at the Cadillac Farmer's Market has really been great. I bought a half bushel of Gala apples and wanted to share them with my daughter in Kotzebue, Alaska. I decide to try dehydrating them to make apple "leathers". The maker of my dehydrator sells some chemicals for pre-treatment. I decided to simply soak the slice in a solution of citric acid for 5 minutes. It should help keep the slices from turning brown.


I did not core the apples, simply sliced them. Seeds fell out by themselves while I was slicing. It took about 15 hours at 135 degrees to get the results shown below.


They taste great and you can tell they were made with Gala apples.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Keith,

Your blog is making me miss my home state of Michigan! Just wanted to mention that another way of doing apples is to dip them in salt water (2-4 Tbsp per gallon water) for a couple minutes before drying. It's a different taste, a tiny bit de-sweetened (I don't want to say salty) versus a bit sour from the citric/ascorbic acid.

Keith in Cadillac said...

Eugenia,
I dried some fall raspberries. They look like works of art but what can I do with them? How do we use them?
Can you recommend a book regarding drying foods?
Thanks
Keith

Anonymous said...

Just left you a comment on my blog. For drying, I'd recommend How To Dry Foods by Deanna DeLong. It's an older book but has great tips for each fruit/veg.