Sunday, September 29, 2013

Dehydrated Fruit Chips

Dehydrated Fruit Chips. 

The options are really limitless in my opinion. 
But some of my personal favorites:

Cantaloupe: 
The important thing is to use a ripe melon. The dehdration process just makes the flavor stronger, so if your melon is still a little tart and unripe, your chips will turn out tart! (yes I did learn that lesson the hard way.)
So you start by slicing the melon into 1/4" thick slices. Remove the rind and place on your trays.
and go. 
I did mine at 130 degrees for about 10 hours. 
They look like this once done. Delicious and crispy


Watermelon Chips:

Same process. Again super important to use a really ripe melon.
If your watermelon has black seeds, you should remove those. The White seeds you can keep, they are ok to eat.
I used a little melon for my chips, so the final chips are little and round instead of slices.
Optional: sprinkle with some sea salt. That is if you like salt on watermelon. I do so I did :)


Then Plum Chips.
I personally love these. You can take them out a little earlier and have some plum jerky if you like. Otherwise you sohuld probably eat these chips a little faster as they don't tend to stay crispy as long as the melon chips do.
I like to soak my slices in orange juice overnight to give it a plum-orangey flavor, but you don't have to. Plums on their own are pretty tasty anyways.
You don't have to remove the skin, as you can eat it. But you can if you want. The skin gets a little hard, but I personally don't have any problem with it.