Dried Apples

Our local grocery store had an amazing sale on apples, so I bought 13 pounds.  We don't have a peeler/corer, so I was concerned that it would be a time consuming and labor intensive project.  In fact, after the first batch (my dehydrator only holds about 3 pounds of apples at a time) RM and I had a system worked out.  We have one of those apple slicing deals that you push down around the core and it cores and slices, rather like this one:

The downside to this style apple slicer is that you have to peel apples before you dehydrate them, and the slices it makes are too thick.  Additionally, before you dehydrate apples, you need to soak them in a lemon juice solution or sprinkle them with some sort of preserver such as Fruit Fresh.  So RM and I set up an assembly line of sorts; he peeled then sliced the apples with the slicer, then I cut the slices in half or thirds, then put them into the bowl of our lemon solution.  When the bowl got full, I arranged the slices on the dehydrator racks, then started slicing and soaking again.  We tried two different apples, and two different soaking mixes.  The apples needed to dehydrate 20-30 hours at 135 degrees, depending on whether we wanted chewy or crispy apples.

The first lemon solution we made was simple, consisting of one part lemon juice to three parts water.  I added some EZ Sweets (a liquid artificial sweetener) out of concern that the lemon would make the apples a bit sour.  You could opt not to use any sweetener, or dissolve a little sugar into your mix, to taste. We simple allowed the slices to soak as the bowl was filling, a few minutes, and that seemed sufficient time to keep the apples from browning.

The next solution we made I decided to try adding some spices, in the hopes that we might make something reminiscent of apple pie.  To 1/4 cup lemon juice and 3/4 cups water, I added 1/4 teaspoon each of ground clove and ground nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon each of cinnamon and vanilla extract, and 5 drops of EZ Sweets (roughly the equivalent of 5 packets of Splenda, but unfortunately I don't know how that translates to sugar).

The two apple types I used were Red Delicious and Red Gala apples.

Results:
Though they were more difficult to peel because of their shape, the Red Delicious apples were definitely tastier.  I liked the spiced mix, but in moderation.  For a regular snack RM and I agree that the more simple, plain lemon juice and water mix is better.