How to make drying plums in the oven. Prunes benefits and harm to the body

For good nutrition and health, it is important that the preparation of a particular product follows certain conditions. This also applies to dried fruits, for example, prunes, useful in all respects. Not everyone knows how to dry prunes at home.

Knowing certain rules, you can independently achieve a high-quality product that differs from the store.

Two methods for drying plums:

1. Without the use of sugar. It will be an excellent addition to meat dishes, salads, etc.

Cooking steps:

1.1. Dried prunes in the oven. A portion of plums is chosen according to desire and possibilities. The fruits should be ripe, although firm. It is better that the pulp is fleshy.

1.2. After washing the fruits well in running water, they remove the seeds, on which soft fibers should not remain, otherwise the fruits are not suitable for drying. For effective drying, halves of the fruit are used, it will take less time.

1.3. The plum is blanched. Handfuls of halves are poured into a pot filled with boiling water, waiting for a couple of minutes. No need to re-boil.

1.4. Send the plum into a bowl of cold water. After cooling the fruit, they are waiting for the droplets to drain to put the plum to dry in one layer on a towel. The halves should soften but not be cooked.

1.5. Prunes dry on a rag for an hour, all this time they periodically interfere with it.

1.6. Paper is covered on a baking sheet, on which slices are poured in one layer.

1.7. In an oven preheated to 50 degrees, a sheet with plums is put to dry for three hours. Stir the fruit a couple of times.

1.8. After increasing the regime to 70 degrees, they withstand another hour or an hour and a half.

1.9. Dry the pieces by placing them on a wire rack on the windowsill. You have to wait 2 to 4 days. Dried prunes by this method look matte, soft, but not wet. 2.

2. With sugar. Great dessert for kids.

Rules of natural and artificial way

You can dry fruits in the sun or in the oven. For natural drying, follow the recommendations:

• • The fruits are washed and disinfected in a soda solution when it boils, rinsed in cold water and dried.

• Then they are laid out on a board or sheet with some distance from each other under the sun's rays. They wait about half a week, turning the fruits every day so that they do not get moldy.

• They are harvested on the shady side and wait for the final stage for several days, depending on the size of the fruit.

Tip for artificial drying: to disinfect and properly prepare slices or whole fruit for drying, washed parts for 5 seconds. are in a boiling soda solution (1 tablespoon per liter), after which they are thoroughly rinsed in cold water. After the procedure, the peel will be in shallow small cracks. The process takes two days. It is better to get rid of damaged fruits. If the plum is cut, its inside should look up. For spicy blanching, you can use a mixture of water + citric acid (1 to 50), this will make the prunes soft and tender.

Advice on how to store dried raw materials: dried fruit is best stored in a cloth bag or wooden box. It is necessary to prevent dampness and the presence of insects. In order to protect prunes from flies and bees, you can cover it with a piece of gauze. Milking for long-term storage, after the raw material has been dried, it is dipped in syrup from a liter of water and a kilogram of granulated sugar. Cook for five minutes and leave for a day, after which you should boil again, pull out, rinse and dry the plum, put it in jars and sterilize. The product can be stored for a couple of years.

Prunes from the microwave

Electromagnetic radiation allows the plum to be dried from all sides equally with the preservation of useful qualities. The washed and wiped parts are laid out on a special dish. Initially, they set the timer for half a minute, checking the fruits for readiness, if necessary, add time, five minutes will be enough. The main thing is not to be distracted in the process, otherwise you can burn a valuable product.

Plum in air fryer

How to properly dry prunes if you have a modern convection oven at hand:

• • The plum is washed and sorted out. Bones inside may remain.

• At 65 degrees, the fruit is dried for 40 minutes. Then it cools down within an hour. This step will need to be repeated. The next day is to wait.

• After that, the fetus is once again subjected to a similar procedure, including an air grill three times for 40 minutes, waiting between stages for an hour.

• They take paper and lay out on it to dry delicious, smoked-smelling dried fruits. From one kg. raw materials, only 200 g of the finished product is obtained.

The benefits of prunes

If you eat dried fruit every morning, it will be easy to cope with the problems of the gastrointestinal tract. The body is cleansed of unnecessary toxins. Prunes are needed for those suffering from anemia and beriberi. It can also serve as an antibacterial, tonic and laxative that improves the body's metabolic processes. Plums, even when dried, are rich in vitamins, fiber, minerals and pectins.

As you know, prunes are particularly successful and popular not only in the field of cooking, but also have a beneficial effect on the human body. But when buying dried fruits, most people are not sure that they do not contain preservatives and pesticides, so you should pay attention to drying plums at home.

It should be noted that prunes are famous for the fact that they include many useful vitamins, fiber, potassium and iron.

The use of prunes will have a beneficial effect on the work of the gastrointestinal tract as a whole, cleansing the body of toxins.

So what is useful prunes:

• Reproduction of pathogenic microorganisms is suppressed;
• Relieves constipation;
• Promotes weight loss;
• The product relieves diseases of the oral cavity;
• There is a positive effect in the early stages of the development of cardiac pathologies;
• Normalizes blood pressure;
• Vision improves.

The benefits of dried prunes:

How to choose plums for drying?

The following varieties of plums are best suited for drying:

• Hungarian Italian;
• Eel;
• Burton;
• -Eric;
• Cherry plum.

Plums for drying must be collected from the ground, those fruits that remain on the tree are not yet fully ripe. If there are no fruits on the ground, then you can shake the plum tree a little, this will help the fruits with rot and wormholes fall to the ground.

attention type=yellow] The fruits should be left lying on the ground overnight and harvested in the morning.

Preparing plums for drying

Preparation of plums for drying includes several stages:

1. After collecting plums from the ground, you need to store the fruits in a covered area in a basket for three days. This is necessary to make the plum softer;
2. It is necessary to sort the plums, dividing them by size;
3. It is required to perform blanching, that is, place the plums in hot water. This action helps to soften plum tissue.

Dry plums

At this stage, there are several methods for drying plums:

• With the help of an oven;
• Using an electric dryer;
• In the microwave or aerogrill;
• Natural way - in the sun.

Homemade hard, sour, late plum prunes:

In the oven

When choosing drying plums in the oven, you need to know that this procedure is carried out in several stages, in addition, the temperature regimes must be observed, because only then can an effective result be achieved:

• At the very beginning, the oven is being prepared, it should be heated to 50 degrees;
• Plums are placed on a baking sheet, which is placed in the oven for 5 hours;
• After the specified time, the plums are removed from the oven and left to cool, this will also take at least 5 hours of time;
• After this time, the baking sheet with plums is again placed in the oven, only now it must be heated to 70 degrees;

IMPORTANT: The fruits are dried for at least five hours, after which they need to be taken out and wait until they cool.

In an electric dryer

The presented drying procedure is similar to the previous method, the fruits must be carefully laid out on a pallet, cut in half, plums are dried:

• Three to four hours at a temperature of 45-55 degrees;
• Then three to six hours, at a temperature of 60 degrees;
• And three to six hours at a temperature of 75-80 degrees.

The most important thing here is to remember that it is necessary to turn the plums once an hour, and such a manipulation must be performed at each stage of drying. It must be remembered that after the end of each stage, it is necessary to pull the pallets out of the dryer, cooling the plums to room temperature.

in the microwave

Few people know, but it is quite possible to dry plums in the microwave. In addition, this drying method is considered not only effective, but also one of the fastest. With this method of drying, the plum is dried evenly, without losing its useful properties.

The drying process includes the following steps:

• Washed plum, you need to spread out on a microwave dish, setting the timer for thirty seconds, power - 250 W;
• It is important to monitor the readiness of fruits, usually it takes no more than five minutes to cook them.

IMPORTANT: You should not increase the power of the microwave, otherwise there is a high probability that the plums will turn into coals.

In air grill

To dry plums in an air grill, the following manipulations are performed:

• It is necessary to wash the plum and remove the stalk;
• D aerogrill temperature is set to + 65C;
• The drying time is 40 minutes, after which the fruit must be left to cool for an hour.

These steps should be repeated twice, after which the plums are left until the next day, and the very next day they are dried three times for forty minutes.

In the sun

ON A NOTE: When carrying out the drying process in this way, one must not forget to turn the plums over, then they will dry out on all sides.

This drying method is widely popular among housewives because it does not require any special efforts. All you need to do is lay the halves of pitted plums on a leaf, trying not to do it too tightly, they should be in the sun for five days, maybe more, it all depends solely on the size of the fruit.

Be sure to keep an eye on the fruit, flies and wasps should not sit on them, as they can bring harmful bacteria. At night, it is advisable to bring fruit into the room, and in the morning take it out into the air.

How to dry prunes:

Determining the quality of dried fruits

It is important to look closely at dried fruits to determine their quality, because appearance plays an important role. As for good fruits, they always remain whole, do not have shell cracks or breaks. In a word, they must be elastic, solid and clean.

How to store?

If the housewife does not have a pantry, then you can always store prunes in the kitchen, packaging them in containers with a lid. Before using such containers, containers, without fail, must be rinsed with boiling water and dried.

plum marshmallow

Plums can always be used to make delicious marshmallows, which are also healthy. As for the recipes for its preparation, there are a huge number of them, but in general, this requires:

• Plums - one kilogram;
• One glass of sugar.

After the plums are washed, you need to prepare a cast-iron dish and pour water into it, one centimeter high, the plums are boiled in it for about an hour over low heat, after which they cool. Cooled plums must be rubbed through a sieve. The resulting puree is cooked, in parallel with this, sugar is added there, do not forget to mix.

Ready-made puree should be put on a baking sheet, marshmallow is dried in the sun, or in the oven.

It is important to add that those dried fruits that are prepared in the right way are stored for a long time, retaining all the beneficial properties.

Prunes - the benefits and harms of fresh and dried:

How to properly dry garden plums in the best way at home - my tips with videos, photos and recommendations will help. Delicious plums are best consumed fresh.
Most of the vitamins are concentrated in juicy fruits, they are perfectly absorbed by the body and in general, fresh plums are much tastier.

If fruits are in abundance, then immediately what you want to do is cook jam for the winter, marmalade, jam, and the like. Plum wine, amazing in taste and aroma, is made from the fruits. Also, ripe plums are dried. The best simple and affordable harvesting method retains most of the vitamins, unlike heat treatment.

According to the ripening period, fruits are divided into early, middle and late, and those, in turn, are further divided into many types. "Hungarian" - the best variety of plums for drying. In addition to it, other types are also used, including blackthorn and cherry plum. Only ripe fruits are suitable for processing.

To properly store overripe plums, we need:

• ripe plums;
• drinking water;
• baking soda.

The best option for proper drying of garden fruits would be to use an electric dryer. In the absence of special equipment, a conventional oven can be used. The main thing is to stick to proven recommendations.

How to dry dried plums at home: the best way

1. First, the fruits are blanched in a boiling solution of baking soda - 15 g of powder per 1 liter of water, and then washed. After such a procedure, cracks should appear on the skin of the fruit. During drying, draining through a fine mesh, unnecessary moisture is evaporated from the surface. If large tears occur on the skin or it slips, the soda solution should be diluted or the time for immersing the fruit in boiling water should be reduced.

2. After blanching, the plums are allowed to dry and then laid out in a single layer, cut side up, on a baking sheet covered with glossy paper. At a temperature of 50 degrees, the plums are dried for three to four hours. At this stage, the fruits begin to wrinkle. Next, the temperature is increased to 75 degrees.

3. To obtain high-quality dried fruits, it is recommended to take breaks for several hours. This improved measure will prevent the fruit juice from leaking out. In total, the entire process of heat treatment in the oven will take at least 12 hours and it is better to dry the plums for two to three days.

4. Ready prunes should be elastic and soft to the touch and at the same time resilient. Dried fruits are checked by pressing on the fruits - plum juice should not stand out. This quality can be achieved if, at the last stage of drying, the fruits are kept for several minutes in an oven with a temperature of 100 degrees.

You won't find a better way, plums. Amazing in taste and healthy, dried fruits help treat heart disease, stomach ailments and fight excess weight. Prunes successfully replace sugar.

• When purchasing prunes on the market, you should pay attention to its appearance. A well-dried plum should have a black color with a slight sheen and elastic fleshiness. The brown shade of prunes and rancid taste indicates violations in the processing of fruits. In this case, the fruits lose their beneficial properties and vitamin and mineral composition.
• The most useful prunes are naturally dried without glycerin treatment. Juicy and ripe plums are harvested, washed and dried in the sun for several days. Pitted prunes have long been considered the healthiest dried plums.
• The calorie content of prunes is determined by the high content of sugar and carbohydrates - 231 kcal per 100 g. In dried dehydrated plums, there are 339 kcal per 100 g. Significantly lower calorie content of canned prunes - for every 100 g of fruit 105 kcal. Due to the high calorie content of dried plums, people with obesity should not consume them excessively.

I suggest watching a video on the topic "Dry apples, pears and plums." Subscribe to updates Food tips and recipes

As well as the result, I decided to continue my experiments on the drain.

How to dry plums at home? Let's try to figure it out today on my small but pleasant experience.

I really love plums, especially Hungarian. I cook everything that is possible in the season - pickle, cook jam and jam. And the size of eating fresh plums, in general, defies description 🙂

But I always bought prunes on the market. And every time I bought it, I ran into a problem with either a very high price or dubious quality. With the seeming abundance of prunes, choosing what you need can really be difficult.

"Smoked" prunes excluded from the constant diet for a long time - not the most useful option. I indulge sometimes, adding a few pieces when salting fish. I want natural, but where can I find it? On Privoz several times I “got” on prunes with a taste of rancid oil. It turns out that plums are lubricated with oil for a better presentation. It’s also good if it’s edible oil ... Before the holidays, it’s generally scary to buy prunes - it is “weighted” with water, taking advantage of the increased demand. And then such plums are practically not stored at home, either they turn sour or become covered with mold. Last year, all winter, I bought dried prunes at the Spicy Hata store. Everything suited me in terms of taste and quality, but the price (!) - 220 UAH. or $10 per kilo.

Looking at the offer and prices for "Hungarian" this year, I decided to cook prunes at home on my own. Fresh plum "Hungarian" this year cost 6-10 UAH / kg ($ 0.3-0.45) on delivery. 6 UAH per plum. it was necessary to search in the morning and bargain well, and two buckets of plums cost 120 UAH. , they brought me straight home :). From these 13 kg of “plum happiness”, I got 3.6 kg of luxurious natural prunes. The cost of 1 kg of finished prunes (based on the cost of the plum) is $1.5/kg, taking into account the spent electricity - about $2/kg. Comments, as they say, are unnecessary 🙂

In general, if you can buy cheap plums, be sure to try drying plums at home and get natural homemade prunes.

I must say right away that I made prunes in two ways - using sugar syrup (according to the dried cherry method) and dried natural prunes without sugar.

I liked both options. The first is sweeter, dessert, more popular with children, the second is natural dried without sugar. Suitable for supporters of a healthy diet, it is good to add it to meat dishes, salads, etc.

Today I will tell you about the second method of drying plums - without sugar.

Today, our recipe does not contain the heading "Ingredients", since it contains one item - plum.

The only thing you need to decide on is the portion for drying. I dried the plums in the oven at the lowest temperature and with the door ajar. 3 kg of plums are placed on two sheets of my oven, here is my bookmark, which is why it was 3 kg.

• For drying, we choose ripe, but dense fruits with fleshy pulp.
  
• Wash the plums and remove the pits. By the way, when buying, pay attention to the ease of removing the bone. If the bone is removed as in the photo on the right,
  - drain for drying is not suitable for us.
  We will dry the plums in halves, this is more effective than drying with whole fruits - the drying time is greatly reduced. I tried to leave the plums whole (the photo is at the top right, but then I still divided them into halves)
• The next stage of preparation is blanching. We prepare two pots, fill them with water. We send one to the fire and bring to a boil. We send halves of plums into it and hold for 1.5-2 minutes. Do not bring to a boil again.

  

  Then we quickly shift the plums into a container with cold, it is possible with running water. Cool, let the water drain and spread in one layer on a cloth (I use rags or old towels). The plum should become a little softer, but remain elastic and fresh in taste (i.e. not boiled)

  

  Let the plum dry after blanching

• We dry the plum on the fabric for an hour, periodically, turning over.
  
• We cover the oven tray with paper and lay out the halves of the plums in one layer.
• We heat the oven to 40-50 degrees and dry the plums for 3 hours. I change the sheets once, turn the plum over 2 times during this time.
• Then I increase the temperature to 60-70 degrees and dry for another 1-1.5 hours.
• The last stage - I dry the plum on the windowsill for 2-4 days on the oven rack.
  
  
  
  Very convenient - the grill has small "legs", and the drain has air access from all sides. I dried in the open air at a temperature of 20-22 degrees (mid-September in the yard :)).
• It looks like this: matte on the skin side, soft, but not wet. And this is how dried plums without sugar differ from dried plums after aging in sugar syrup. Sugar-free dried plum is on the right.

  

  Plum dried natural and Dried prunes with sugar

  Since I didn’t have the opportunity to measure the humidity in the laboratory, I decided to store my prunes in the freezer, and it will be safer there 🙂 I packaged it in paper bags, then packed it in a plastic bag and sent it to the freezer.

Summing up - cooking homemade prunes:

1. Blanching - promotes the formation of microcracks on the skin and subsequent faster drying.
2. Drying in the oven - 3 hours at 40-50 degrees, 1.5 hours - at 60-70 degrees (not vice versa, some set a higher temperature at the beginning of drying - this is wrong)
3. Drying plums in the open air - 2-4 days - depends on the temperature in the room. The yield of dried plums is 26-28% of the original pitted weight. Namely, with this output, the condition of the finished prunes seemed ideal to me 🙂

Try to dry the plum yourself at home - it's much easier than it might seem after my long story. And the benefits are pure health 🙂

Cook with pleasure and come visit!

Discussion: 12 comments

And I think why I don't like prunes. Yes, because its quality and safety are highly questionable. And that smell of smoke or soot...
I see that your prunes are a completely different matter. Apparently tasty and healthy!

Answer

1. Lina, so you don’t eat prunes at all????
   We have various varieties of prunes for sale, and the more beautiful they are, the more brilliant, i.e. the more harmful additives were added to them during smoking or drying. Somewhere I read about it. Therefore, I buy inexpensive and pale prunes.

   Answer

I also dried plums without sugar. At the dacha, the Hungarians gave birth to fame. I dried it in the oven, I have an electric one, in the top mode, but I kept it longer and for the last time at 120 degrees. They turned out shiny. Before drying, I lowered the plums into a soda solution (per 1 liter of water-15 g of soda) for 1 min. I keep them in paper bags in the pantry.

Dried prunes are a tasty and healthy dried fruit that is sold in stores all year round. The cost, and the quality of the goods is not always satisfied with the buyer. Therefore, there is great news for lovers of prunes - plums can be prepared in advance and then used to prepare various dishes.

How to dry prunes - which plums are suitable

To get a very tasty and healthy prunes, you need to choose the right plum for drying. Namely, a ripe “Hungarian” is suitable, the variety can be called “Hungarian” or “Italian Hungarian”. This variety of plum has a very dense skin and pulp. Just what you need for drying. In addition, "Hungarian" has more sugar than other varieties of plums and not as much acid. An ideal variety not only for drying, but also for harvesting for the winter, because the stone is easy to separate without damage. By the way, any variety of "Hungarian" is suitable for drying. If you come across a variety of "Hungarian purple" or "Azhanskaya", feel free to proceed to the blanks.

How to dry prunes - preparing plums

It is known that elastic, mature and intact fruits are suitable for harvesting for the winter. The plum will have to be plucked from the branches, and not to coward the tree, in order to then collect the plums that have fallen to the ground. If no other option is provided, then you can shake the branch somewhere in the afternoon. Overripe plums (they can be used for jams and preserves), rotten ones (will have to be thrown away) and unripe plums will fall to the ground. In the morning, just a favorable period begins for the collection of ripe fruits.

Collected plums should be put in a basket with holes, left in a well-ventilated area for 3 days.

Sorting: ripe and undamaged plums are selected, crushed, rotten and spoiled are thrown away. Leaves and stalks must be removed, bones - carefully removed. Divide the plums by size so that the halves are approximately the same size.

How to dry prunes

You can dry the plum both in the oven and in a special electric dryer. Not every housewife has such a device, but an oven is installed in every apartment or house. Therefore, it is easiest to learn how to dry plums in the oven.

How to do it right:

• to get 1 kg of dry finished product, you will need to prepare approximately 4.5 fresh sorted plums;
• to speed up the drying process, plums can be pre-blanched: dip in boiling water with the addition of soda (15 g per 1 liter of liquid) for literally 30 seconds, quickly remove, immediately rinse well in cold water. To do this, prepare a pot of cold water and put next to the stove;
• if you did everything right, then the result of the work will appear immediately: the skin of the plums will become a fine mesh. Just what you need in order to get rid of excess moisture during drying;
• if the first pancake turned out to be a lump and large cracks appeared on the surface of the plums or “the skin peeled off” altogether, this means that it is necessary to reduce the blanching time and instead of 30 seconds, hold the plums in boiling water for 20 seconds;
• after the blanching is done, the plums can be dried. This can be done as follows: prepare baking sheets for drying in the oven, lay baking paper, spread the plums in 1 layer so that the plum “looks” with the cut up;
• drying temperature 45 degrees, duration - 3 hours. You will notice that the skin will begin to wrinkle gradually. Just after 3-4 hours of drying the drain, you can increase the temperature and set the oven timer to 80 degrees (this is the maximum), dry for 10 minutes. Then the oven must be turned off and the plums left for 5 hours, until completely cooled;
• then repeat the steps again and so on for 3 days. The last stage of drying is exposure for 2-3 minutes in the oven at maximum (temperature 100 degrees). This is necessary in order for the sugar to stand out and caramelize at a high temperature.

Ready prunes are soft and elastic, and if you press it down, then the juice should not stand out.