Follow Up on the Dehydrating Apples experiment

On our first blog of October, I mentioned that I was trying to dehydrate some apple slices.  I tried using both the solar oven and the windshield of the truck.  If you go back to the pictures from that blog you will see how many apple "chips" I was able to make with 5 apples. 

I am happy to annouce that it was a success.  The windshield of the truck and the solar oven both worked equally well.  In fact, I wasn't able to take pictures of the final product because they were just a little bit too tasty.  Between my daughter and I, we had those chips eaten in a very short amount of time.  I really think that I prefer the dehydrated apples over regular apples.  I think it has something to do with the fact that there is no water to "dilute' the sweetness of the apple. 

I would encourge everyone to try to dehydrate some fruit.  I simply went online and checked out a few sites to see how to do it.  Lessons I learned:

1)  Soak the apples slices in a mixture of 1 cup of water with 1 tablespoon of Lemon Juice for 8 to 10 minutes to keep the apples from turning brown right away.  (They will brown up a little in the dehydrating process)

2)  Don't look the apple chips touch each other on the dehydrating rack.  Make sure that air has a chance to get to both sides of the chips.

3)  Air temperature should be between 115-150 degrees for the best results. 

4)  Due to cloudy skies, the apples took a couple of days to fully dehydrate in the windshield.  (One full day of sunshine in the solar oven)

If you have any questions just leave me a comment.  Happy Trails!