Dried fruit is tasty and healthy candy. Since ancient times, dried fruits have been used to enrich food. You can sweeten food naturally with dried fruit. In addition, it is also healthy. It contains slightly fewer vitamins than fresh fruit, but you can eat more of dried fruit. It is a tasty and medicinal ingredient in many types of meals. NB! This article is written from the personal view of the author and may contain information that is not scientifically substantiated and/or in line with the general view.

Contents:

• You can dry peels
• Fruit was already dried 5000 years ago
• Beware of sulfur dioxide
• Long storage time
• Vitamins in dried fruit
• Tuttifrutti
• The raisin
• Raw foods
• Dried fruits table

You can dry peels

There are all kinds of dried fruits for sale. The different types are listed in a table at the bottom of this article. The easiest way to buy mixed dried fruits is to buy a bag of tuttifrutti. There’s already a mixture in there. You can buy loose raisins, dried apple, dried cranberry and goji berries. It is also a good idea to dry fruits yourself. This also applies to dried fruit peels. It is relatively easy to dry them because you can simply put them on a plate that you place on the central heating or in front of a window where a lot of sun comes in. You can dry the peel of organic apples and oranges to use them later for a homemade fruit tea. The skin of non-organic apples contains too many pesticides to eat.

Fruit was already dried 5000 years ago

Dried fruits were widely used by the Sumerians. A dried apricot tastes just like candy and, unlike candy, contains many healthy nutrients. Sumerians have written many recipes on clay tablets showing that they put a lot of dried fruit in bread. Remnants of this in our era are the currant bun, and bread with pieces of sucade, which is sugared fruit.

Beware of sulfur dioxide

Nowadays sulfur dioxide is used to dry fruit. Contrary to what people think, this does not extend the shelf life but only ensures a better color. Raisins without sulfur are dark and raisins with sulfur are ocher yellow. Dried fruit can be kept for several years with or without sulfur. Sulfur does not harm most people, but some people still suffer from it. It can cause severe itching and a rash. People with asthma and bronchitis may experience a temporary worsening of symptoms.

Long storage time

To give fruit a long storage life, all you have to do is dry it. The bacteria and enzymes that cause fruit to rot need water. If you allow the moisture to be extracted from a fruit, they don’t get a chance and the fruit doesn’t rot. The big advantage of drying fruit is the longer shelf life. Traditionally, fruit is dried in the sun, but nowadays there are industrial ways to dry fruit in special ovens. Another method is freeze-drying, after which the powder is made into a fruit juice. Orange juice and apple juice are produced this way.

Vitamins in dried fruit

By releasing heat from an oven on the fruit, some vitamins are lost. Dried fruits contain less vitamin C than fresh fruits. On the other hand, the phytonutrients are in higher concentrations in the dried variety of fruit. There are many polyphenols in fruit that act as antioxidants. They help prevent damage to cells caused by free radicals. Some fruits contain much more of a certain vitamin or mineral. For example, dried apricots contain relatively much vitamin A and plums are an above-average source of vitamin K. Dried fruit is packed with fiber. These help digest the food better and more gradually. Almost all dried fruit contains the minerals magnesium, manganese, copper, iron, potassium and calcium.

Tuttifrutti

Tuttifrutti is the best-known dish that frequently uses dried fruits. It contains dried apricot, plum, pear, peach and apple. You can also buy tutti frutti to add these fruits to your homemade muesli. Then no more sugar is needed, because dried fruits are very sweet and contain relatively more calories because they are less weight. One dried apple basically contains as many calories as one non-dried apple.

The raisin

Raisins are the best known dried fruit. Raisins are dried grapes. Children are often given a box of raisins so that they can enjoy a reasonably healthy snack. In addition, you could also snack on dried apricots, plums and apples. Dried fruits are very healthy because they contain all kinds of phytonutrients.If you want to use dried fruit such as figs to sweeten the muesli, it is wise to soak the figs overnight. 

Raw foods

The raw food diet does not use sugar. Fruits are used to make sweet snacks. Very tasty pastries can be made with dried dates. You can add dried fruit pieces to pancake batter. Cutting dried fruit into small pieces, putting them in the pan and pouring the pancake batter over it to make a delicious tutti-frutti pancake is a great way to make a tasty dessert. Dried fruit is great to sprinkle over a salad; Especially mixed with the sour lemon as a dressing, the dried sweet fruit can taste delicious with a green salad.

Dried fruits table

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