Dried Apples and Bananas

My generation has very little personal experience with food preservation beyond what they purchase in a can at the supermarket.  Our parents and grandparents routinely canned the bounty of their garden harvests, but again, gardening is also something that few of my generation have any experience with.

One of the easiest ways to preserve fruits and vegetables is drying them.  Dried fruit makes delicious and nutritious snacks.  Dried vegetables are great for adding to soups and stews.  We'll talk about more of the finer details of drying produce in upcoming posts.

I recently dried some bananas and apples for daytime snacks.  I chose to simply slice the apples into thin wedges because I don't have a coring tool.  If you have a coring tool, they would look really nice sliced into rings with the core cut out.  Many people will pretreat their apples with lemon juice to keep them from turning brown, but I did not do that and they turned out beautifully.  Dried apples taste great when they are lightly sprinkled with cinnamon.  Add the cinnamon BEFORE drying!

Bananas make a delicious dried snack.  I personally don't like the rock-hard store-bought version.  I like to stop drying once they are chewy, but not squishy.  Most people slice the bananas and pretreat them with lemon juice to prevent browning.  I don't do either.  I cut the banana in half in the middle, then, following one of the little grooves, I cut those segments in half lengthwise.  You are then able to divide each of these sections into three pieces by running your thumb along the other grooves.  So one banana will yield 12 thin, uniform-sized wedges when cut this way.

My dad loves to name things.  He has dubbed this version of dried bananas as "monkey bones".

Watch for upcoming posts on food drying.  I'll suggest an inexpensive food dryer, a great book, and yummy things you should try.