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Fruit leather (fruit roll-ups) is a great snack or dessert that makes good use of the pulp that is leftover from processing fruit for various recipes such as jelly, juice, etc. It satisfies a sweet craving. It's a snack we like to bring on biking or kayaking trips and when camping. A couple of days ago I made grape fruit leather. I started off with the pulp that was leftover from steam juicing grapes for grape juice - basically it was grapes that had popped and had most of the juice drain out. You can of course start with whole fruit too. The first step once you have your fruit or leftover pulp is to purée it. I use a handcrank food mill for that operation, which has the advantage of removing the fruit's skin and any seeds. Alternatively, you can just put everything in a blender. Ideally you are looking for applesauce consistency or dryer. If there seems to be excess liquid in it at this point, I would recommend straining it. Personally I would use the liquid I strain out for something like flavoring sparkling water from our sodastream or adding flavor to homemade ice cream. Once you have your purée, you spread it on parchment paper and put it in the dehydrator. I have a nice Excalibur dehydrator (it comes on sale on amazon once in a while). If you don't have a dehydrator, you can also dehydrate using an oven with the door ajar - I haven't tried that myself but it seems like many people do it that way. Your dehydrator will likely indicate the temperature to use (mine says 135F). Dehydrating fruit leather can take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours depending on your dehydrator, the consistency of the pulp, and the thickness (I recommend between 1/8 to 1/4 inch for the thickness of the layer of pulp). If you have a more basic dehydrator, you may have to rotate the trays during the process. It's best to monitor the process the first few times to get an idea of the timing that works for your setup. I like to start mine just before bedtime as it takes at least overnight. After waking up, if the process isn't done, I can keep an eye on things. The leather should be pliable and be easy to peel off of the parchment paper without falling apart. Once it's ready, I use scissors to cut it into strips and I roll up the strips. I store them in a mason jar in the fridge. They do okay at room temperature for a while which makes them a good camping or biking snack.
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 Originally I did all my juicing with an electric juicer. A couple years ago though, after our apple trees really came onto their own, my electric juicer died (the motor burned up). After doing some online research into what a more robust model might be, I realized that a steam juicer might be better suited to the homesteading lifestyle. Electric juicers seem to be better suited for making a couple glasses of juice here and there, whereas a steam juicer seems better equipped for handling large quantities of fruit. There is a third option which is a juicing press but I haven't looked into it seriously (I am not sure I want to dedicate the space to it). This is my first year using my steam juicer, and so far, so good. A steam juicer is made to run on the stovetop and it has three components:
It takes a couple of hours to extract the juice from the fruit. It's not a labour intensive process, but you do have to be around to occasionally drain off the juice and refill the bottom pan. It's most convenient to run a batch on a day where you are doing something else in the kitchen (not a problem at this time of year). So far, we made grape juice from our concord grapes, which I canned in quart jars. It is concentrated, we'll dilute it what we drink it. We also made apple juice which Ray is preparing for hard cider as I type. A steam juicer is really nice when paired up with a dehydrator. Once the juice is extracted from the fruit, you'll be left with pulp in the colander. We ran the pulp through a food mill (to purée it) and spread the purée onto dehydrator trays. This made delicious fruit leather. |
