How many of us grew up on processed fruit snacks? I know I did. And with all the health problems we face as a generation, I wanted to change the definition of “fruit snacks” for my kids.
Fruits snacks, fruit rolls, and gummy candies, it’s all easy for us to grab while watching tv or playing outside. But these are not real foods, and I want my kids to build better eating habits and make their snacks from real food.
I decided our little suburban homestead needed a dehydrator. It’s important to select a dehydrator that’s suitable for your needs. We have kids, dogs, and chickens all of which eat dried ingredients. We need one that was big enough to support meal planning and making snacks that would last my kids at least a week, a month if we aren’t on a fruit snack binge lol.
Benefits of a Dehydrator
Having a dehydrator on our suburban homestead allows us to make our own snacks, preserving our own meat, making our own herb mixes, and zest. It’s truly been a blessing to have access to these resources.
It’s my opinion, having access to equipment, like dehydrators, mixers, composters, etc. is an essential part of a suburban homestead.
My kids are learning to make real fruit snacks that are actually made with whole fruits. We are learning as a family to use food that comes from our garden, our local farm stand first, and grocery stores as are our last stop.
You can maximize your food supply through preservation, and dehydrating is one of the easiest methods. You will waste less food than by having it sit in the fridge. And one of the greatest benefits is you don’t necessarily need to plan what your dehydrating.
Let’s say you bought fresh fruit for the kids snacks, but this month their not eating it as fast. Its been about 2 weeks and the fruit is starting to look over ripe. You know if it doesn’t get eaten in a few days its going to go bad. Rather than wait to see if anyone will eat it before it spoils, just slice up the ripe fruit and dehydrate for snacks that are ready when the family is ready to eat them. Here is the step by step process to dehydrating.
Selecting Ingredients
As a suburban homestead we still rely on our local produce stands and grocery stores. We are building a lifestyle that supports family values, local farms, and only purchasing absolute necessities from major grocery stores.
We bought our fruit from the local farm stand, Ramos Country Corner. When purchasing fruit directly from a farm, you do need to inspect the fruit thoroughly but its worth it. We can get so much more produce at the farm stand than we can at the grocery store.
Seasonal produce, no waxed fruit just organic whole food 🙂
Prepping the Food
We rinsed the fruit with 1/2 cup of vinegar and 1 gal of water for 10 minutes. Next, rinse the fruit with fresh water.
There are several ways you can do this. In a large bowl, directly in the sink, or you can use a produce rinser. I like the produce rinser for vegetables with leaves, for items like apples a soak in the sink is just as good.
Once rinsed we slice the fruit thinly, I would say no more than 2 cm wide. If your making herbs or soup mixes you would chop your ingredients.
Prepping Your Tools
Now, if your anything like me, and didn’t grow up in a home where cooking was a regular activity, you may not know what kitchen tools are needed for different kinds of cooking projects.
I for one never learned which knives were used for what or why you use different cutting boards for different foods. The cooking panda has a great article on knives, and it was very helpful for me when I was trying to figure out which knife in my drawer I should use to cut vegetables. And because I’m such a book worm and carry books everywhere I go, I also found the encyclopedia of kitchen tools and added it to my library.
The type of knife I use to cut fruit and vegetables is called a santoku knife. I was lucky enough to have someone give me a santoku knife from cutco, a high end brand of kitchen tools and its my favorite for chopping vegetables.
The next tool are clean cutting boards, its not necessary but very helpful to have them color coded and stamped to prevent cross contamination. I never knew that cutting boards carried contaminants even after cleaning.
Honestly, dedicating myself to suburban homesteading has taught me so much that I didn’t learn in school and was not taught at home. Sure I had chores, but nothing that gave me all the information. The what, how, and why is something I have learned recently.
For example, I learned wood cutting boards are actually better at reducing bacteria and long term use that plastic cutting boards. Natural Household Cleaning by Rachelle Strauss.
Now that you have your tools ready, its time to start dehydrating and preserving your food.
Using a Dehydrator
Using a dehydrator is fairly simple. All that’s really needed is thinly sliced or chopped ingredients. Spread out on the sheets in a single layer. The single layer is key to ensuring everything drys evenly. If the food gets stacked up on top of each other it will dry uneven.
Lay it flat on a dehydrating tray and pop them in the dehydrator at 150 degrees for 6-8 hours. Depending on the consistency of the fruit and the width of your slices, you may need 10 hours.
If you get an uneven layer and the ingredients stack on top of each other one of two things will happen, either you will have sections or pieces that are still raw or you’ll have pieces that will crumble. Overly dry ingredients aren’t always a bad thing if your making herb mixes, but it does create fruit bark rather than fruit leather snacks.
On the other hand if you have pieces that are semi-raw they can grow mold in your containers and be ruined. It’s important to make sure all the ingredients have dried to store the food without growing mold.
Enjoy your fruit snacks
Lastly, If your trays are like mine, they look a little like a strainer, so you will be peeling the fruit or brushing the herbs off the tray and into a container. If the fruit is too soft and doesn’t feel firm or peel off the tray easily, its not done yet. You should manage to pop or peel off your slices easily and with little residue.
Store your snacks in a Tupperware container, these are air tight and reusable. They keep the fruits snacks fresher longer than plastic bags. If the fruit snacks have residual moisture a Tupperware container will not prevent them from growing mold so it’s important to make sure they have fully dehydrated
And now you have fruit bites or fruit chips. A beautiful whole food snack that my kids enjoy putting in their lunch box. Especially plum, that’s her favorite 🙂
I hope you enjoyed this journey in suburban homestead snacking. If your interested in more check out the post on making fruit leather.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are ‘affiliate links’. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission.
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