Dehydration, take one: apples

The oven in my apartment runs on gas (excellent!) and it somewhat on the elderly and substandard side (not so excellent). One of the consequences of this combination is that the oven is always a little warm from the pilot light being on. Recently, I had the idea of putting this energy to use and using my oven as a dehydrator.

Note that if your oven is NOT already an miracle of inefficiency like mine, turning it into a dehydrator may add on substantially your monthly energy bill. Try it out to see how you like dehydrating, and if you think it's going to be something you'll do a lot, look into getting a dedicated food dehydrator.

Now, onto the experimentation. I decided to start things simple and use some fruit I already had on hand:



Here we have one Granny Smith apple, cored and sliced. I placed a piece of muslin fabric on an oven rack, and placed the slices on the cloth. I chose to use fabric rather than a tray to maximize the air circulating around the pieces of fruit. I placed the whole thing into the oven, shut the door, and left it.



These are the apples at 12 hours after starting dehydration. Major reduction in volume, but they still seemed like they might not be totally done.



At 24 hours, however, these are definitely finished.

Verdict: These dries apples tasted delicious, and were dead easy to make. In future, I think I might leave them in slightly thicker pieces. I'll also probably go ahead and remove the skins. I wanted to leave them on since that's where most of the fiber and nutrients hang out, but they turn rather crunchy (in a not so great way) in the oven.

My plans for my new oven dehydrator? First, if my gardening ever takes off, I'd like to be able to preserve seasonal vegetables for use later. Second, when fruit and vegetables are cheap and in season, I can stock up, dry them, and then enjoy later in the year. I'm also having visions of concocting soup mixes for use in backpacking, late nights at the office, etc. Right now, the possibilities are endless!