Dehydrated Apples Slices

Dehydrating your own food has many benefits, especially for camping. One of the biggest benefits of dehydrating your own food is being your own chef. You get to choose delicious and nutritional foods that are portioned to your appetite and are conveniently packaged by you, so cooking is made easy and light weight.  And most important, your not left at the mercy of the pre-packaged backpacking meals that lack flavor and are loaded with chemicals and preservatives.

With our Kauai camping trip just a few days away, we decided to prepare some dehydrated meals and snack food to bring with us to Hawaii. One of the snacks we prepare were dehydrated apple slices.

Apples slices make delicious snacks and more importantly they’re a great source of vitamins. Dehydrated apple slices are easy to eat on the go, pack away light and are easy to prepare. We wanted to share how easy these are to prepare and have listed the steps below to prepare your own dehydrated apple slices.

Step #1 – Clean and Slice Apples

The first step is to find some fresh apples. We picked up some organic Fuji apples from our local grocery store. Once the apples are washed and peeled, cut apples into approximately 1/4 inch thick slices. Cut off seeds in center core and discard. Place apple slices onto food dehydrator tray leaving a little space around each apple slice so air can circulate evenly.

If apples are not going into the dehydrator right after slicing, we recommend soaking them in water with lemon juice to prevent browning.

Step#2 – Dehydrate Apples

Set the dehydrator running temperature to 140 degrees F. Put your trays with apple slices into the dehydrator and run for about 6 hours.

For our apple slices, we used our Magic Mill food dehydrator. There is a link below at the bottom of this page with more information about buying this amazing machine.

Depending on your make and model of dehydrator, your apple slices might dehydrate quicker or may take longer. If this is your first time dehyrdating fruit and unsure how your machine operates, we recommend keeping an eye on them after about the first 4 hours. Your apples should be dry and leathery when they’re all the way dehydrated. It’s important to make sure they shouldn’t have any moisture and apple slices should look similar to a dry sponge.

Step #3 – Remove and Store

Once apple slices are all dehydrated, remove from food dehydrator let them cool. It’s important to let dehydrated food cool all the way before storing so there is no condensation. This can cause dehrated food to spoil so we even recommend letting them cool overnight.

Store in air tight bags or other food storage container in a cool, dark area or even place in refrigerator or freezer for maximum shelf life.

We hope you enjoy making these easy and healthy dehydrated snack