How to dry apricots for the winter - prepare dried apricots, apricots and kaisa at home

Dried apricots - This is a dried apricot with a stone, and most often it dries itself on a tree. This is why apricots are valued the most, because the integrity of the fruit is not compromised, and the fruit does not lose its juice, and with it all the vitamins.

To obtain apricots, small fruits are left on the tree, while large ones are picked and made into kaisa or dried apricots.

Kaisa - This is a dried whole apricot fruit without pit. For kaisa and dried apricots, you need large fruits, ripe, but not overripe.

About the preparation of dried apricots, we even have a separate article.

Apricots need to be washed, and depending on what you are making kaisa or dried apricots, you need to either push out the pit with a wooden stick, or cut the apricot in half and remove it with your hands.

Apricots can be dried in various ways. The simplest and most natural is drying in the fresh air.

Sun drying

Place the prepared fruits on a wire rack, cover with gauze and leave in a draft in the shade for 5-6 hours. The fruits will wilt a little and stop releasing juice. After this, they need to be transferred to the sun and dried to the desired condition. This is easy to check: take dried apricots in your hand and squeeze with your fingers.It should be soft and elastic, but no juice should be released. This natural drying will take you from a week to two, depending on the size of the fruit and the weather.

Drying apricots in the oven.

A faster way to get dried apricots, or kaisa, is to dry them in the oven. Remove the pits from the apricots, line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and place the fruit cut side up.

Set the oven temperature to 50 degrees, place the baking sheet in the oven and cover it, but do not close the door completely. There must be ventilation to allow moisture to escape, otherwise the apricots will simply bake. On average, this drying process takes up to 10 hours.

Drying apricots in an electric dryer

Many housewives have such a useful thing in their kitchen as an electric dryer or convection oven. The drying time of fruits with such assistants is significantly reduced, and the entire process is controlled automatically. Each housewife has her own recipes, and I suggest you familiarize yourself with one of them to get delicious dried apricots, or kaisa.

Select ripe apricots, wash them and remove the pits. Place the fruits in a saucepan and sprinkle with sugar at the rate of 1 glass of sugar per 1 kilogram of apricot.

Just leave the pan on the table overnight so that the apricots release their juice.

In the morning, drain the juice and prepare the syrup. The syrup is prepared from the same juice or water.

The proportions are as follows: for 1 kilogram of apricot, take one glass of water and one glass of sugar.

Boil water with sugar and cook until the sugar is completely dissolved. Pour the apricots into the boiling syrup and squeeze the juice of half a lemon on them. Don’t wait for it all to boil, cover the pan with a lid, turn off the gas and leave until it cools completely.

Place the cooled apricots in a colander and wait for the syrup to drain.It can then be used to prepare compotes, with a delicious apricot flavor.

Place the apricots on the drying tray in one row and set the drying temperature:

The first 2 hours at a temperature of 50 degrees;

Eight hours at 60 degrees;

Last 2 hours at 50 degrees.

It’s long and troublesome, but it’s your dried apricots, and you know for sure that it wasn’t treated with chemicals to make it shine, or any kind of accelerated drying. Such dried apricots can already be given to children and used to treat diseases.

See video from Ezidri Master: Drying apricots – 10 kg

Storage

Properly storing dried apricots is just as important as preparing them. After all, it may completely shrink into stone, or bugs will appear in it, and after so much effort it will be offensive.

You can store dried apricots in glass or plastic containers, with a tightly closed lid, at a temperature not exceeding +20 degrees.

Better yet, freeze it. Dried apricots will not lose anything when stored in the freezer, but you will be sure that nothing will happen to it.

How to cook dried apricots using an air fryer, watch the video: