Dried Apricots.

I’ve had a couple of questions about the dried apricots from last week’s Log.
The first from Savvy Mummy about the methods we use:

Just before Christmas we bought ourselves on of these units (see here on that link) as we prefer to dry some fruits inside during our dusty summers.

Many folks dry their fruit outside just on frames or in solar dryers. Like on that link
Doc made that rack (see that link) last year for the grapes which worked really well but the apricots were a bit stickier and it’s been really windy (and dusty) that year so we didn’t use it that instance.

We don’t use anything to dip the Apricots to preserve them. Occasionally with bananas or apples we might use lemon juice or pineapple juice

to keep them a light colour but we have dried these successfully without any dipping.

Matron asked about the colour of the dried fruit and that I have found interesting. As Matron pointed out chemicals are usually used to keep the bright orange colour of apricots after they are dried and when these chemicals are not used the fruit does tend to go very dark.

This always happened on our old dryer which was smaller and did not have a thermostat. that new model we’ve bought dries the fruit at a lower (controlled) temperature and much of the fruit has retained the orange colour. We plus seem to have more control by the dryness of the fruit and how leathery it becomes.

[Source] Scarecrow