Dried plums at home: recipes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Plums have long been considered an excellent object for harvesting. In the villages, these fruits were usually dried, soaked or made into compote. But dried plums still enjoy the greatest popularity to this day. The process of preparing them is quite long, but the result is a product with excellent taste.

Cooking Methods

Those who have tried dried plums at least once know that they can be not only a fragrant dessert or a great snack.

These are juicy fruits processed in a special way, in some cases they are used as an original garnish for meat. An unusual addition favorably sets off the taste of the main dish and makes it more enjoyable. To prepare dried plums, it is necessary to process products at elevated temperatures. To do this, you can use:

• Russian stove;
• oven;
• electric dryer.

For each of these options, there are specific modes and conditions that must be observed in order for the resulting product to meet the desired requirements. Basically, the technique boils down tofollowing steps:

1. General processing and partial crushing of fruits. Plums can also be cured whole.
2. Initial heat treatment.
3. Introduction of additional components.
4. Finishing.

Depending on the option chosen, the result is a product with certain tastes.

Benefits and harms of spicy plums

As you know, the fruits of the plum tree are excellent helpers for the human body. They are able to:

• manage digestive problems;
• prevent blood clots;
• regulate the level of acidity in the human stomach;
• positively affect the functioning of the liver;
• keep your eyesight;
• detoxify;
• normalize metabolism.

In addition, plums are often used as a cosmetic product, as they are able to nourish skin cells, rejuvenating and making it more elastic. Dried plums retain all these useful properties. Everyone can use them, except for those who have certain medical contraindications for this product. This category of people includes patients with diabetes or obesity, who are better off not including these fruits in their daily diet because of their high calorie content. Breastfeeding mothers should also be wary of plums to avoid causing colic or stomach upset in babies.

DIY

Aromatic spicy plums can turn even the simplest dish into a real culinary masterpiece. That's whyIt is desirable for every housewife to have such useful products in stock at home. But for this, it is not necessary to go to the store. You can safely make dried plums at home. And this will require very few products: 1 kilogram of fresh plums, 3 cloves of garlic, s alt, 100 milliliters of olive oil, allspice and black pepper, as well as dried herbs (rosemary, oregano and thyme).

Making sun-dried plums at home is easy. To do this, you need:

1. Select for work only ripe, fleshy, but fairly dense fruits. After that, they need to be washed and dried thoroughly.
2. Separate each plum with a sharp knife into two halves and remove the seeds from them.
3. Sprinkle the slices lightly with s alt and a mixture of dried herbs, then carefully arrange them on a baking sheet.
4. Preheat the oven to 120 degrees, and then send the prepared products there for 5 hours.
5. At this time, you can peel the garlic and prepare the necessary dishes.
6. After processing, the plum slices should wrinkle a little and lose volume. Now they need to be put in a glass container, alternating with the remaining spices and pieces of garlic.
7. Next, the products need to be poured with oil, corked and put in the refrigerator.

Products can be stored in this state for up to 3 months. At any time, they can be obtained and used for their intended purpose.

According to the advice of Italian masters

In the Mediterranean countries, spicy vegetables and fruits enjoy greatpopularity. So, in Italian cuisine there is a recipe with which you can make very tasty dried plums in the oven yourself. To do this, you will need the following set of ingredients: 1.2 kilograms of ripe plums, 80-90 milliliters of olive and 50 milliliters of vegetable oil, a pinch of sea s alt, 5 cloves of garlic, 2 teaspoons of a mixture of dried Mediterranean herbs with basil and a tablespoon of liquid honey.

The cooking process must be carried out in a certain sequence:

1. Remove the seeds from the washed fruits, and cut the remaining pulp into 4 parts.
2. Place them skin side down on a baking sheet lined with foil or parchment.
3. In a separate bowl, mix aromatic herbs with butter and honey. Pour the resulting mixture over the products.
4. After that, they need to be s alted and sprinkled with herbs again.
5. Put a baking sheet with prepared fruits for 3 hours in the oven, preheated to 130 degrees.
6. In conclusion, the dried quarters should be put in clean jars along with finely chopped garlic and fresh herbs (rosemary, basil), and then pour all this with olive oil and close tightly with a lid.

It is better to store such blanks after cooling in a cool place.

The simplest option

For those who are not accustomed to savory flavors, we can suggest making sweet dried plums in the oven. It will be very simple, since only two main components are required for work: 2 kilograms of fresh plums and 400 grams of sugarsand.

For work, it is better to choose the Hungarian variety. Its fruits are quite large and fleshy. The process technology in this case will be somewhat different:

1. First, as usual, the fruits must be washed, and then, cutting each of them in half, remove the seeds.
2. After this, the blanks must be folded into an enameled container (pan), sprinkled with sugar, and then, setting the press on top, put in a cool place for several hours until juice appears on the surface.
3. The liquid must be separated by straining through a colander, and the halves themselves should be placed on a baking sheet, not forgetting to cover it with parchment.
4. Preheat the oven to 60 degrees, and then put the food in it, leaving the door slightly ajar. The duration of processing will depend on the desired degree of drying.

Finished products should simply be folded into sterile jars and covered with a lid, put in a cool place.

In vivo

To make a delicious dried plum, the recipe can be simplified as much as possible by excluding any additional devices from it. So, for heat treatment it is not necessary to use an oven. It can be completely replaced by natural sunlight. For this option, you will need the main ingredients in the following ratio: 5 kilograms of plums (not overripe), 2 buckets of water and 80 grams of baking soda.

Work will be carried out in the following order:

1. First, plums need to be sorted out, removing rotten fruits.
2. After thatthey must be cut lengthwise and the bones removed.
3. Boil water with soda (10 liters 80 grams), and then, laying the slices in a colander, lower them alternately into a boiling solution for 3 minutes.
4. Put processed foods immediately into a bucket of cold water.
5. After this, the workpiece must be washed, dried with a towel and, laid out on sheets of plywood covered with gauze, exposed to the sun.
6. After three hours of processing, the fruits should be put in the shade for 5 hours.
7. Alternating heating and drying, repeat several times until the products become elastic enough and liquid stops escaping from them when pressed.

It turns out very tender and fragrant dried plum. The recipe is good for rural residents and owners of summer cottages.

Technology to help

Very easy to make dried plums in an electric dryer. This unit partly replaces the oven. Therefore, the same recipes are sometimes suitable for both devices. With the help of an electric drying chamber, many products are processed. And sometimes options are practiced when this requires minimal preparation of the main ingredient. This is how prunes are made in electric dryers.

All you need is fresh fruit, water and baking soda. Drying of products occurs as follows:

1. First of all, the fruits must be blanched. To do this, they must first be immersed in a boiling soda solution for 30 seconds (15 grams of powder per 1 liter of liquid), andthen rinse immediately in cold water. It is necessary to ensure that cracks do not appear on the surface of the fruit. In this case, either reduce the heat treatment time or reduce the concentration of the solution.
2. Spread the prepared plums on a tray covered with baking paper and send them to the drying chamber for 3 hours at a temperature of 50 degrees.
3. Take out the food and let it cool completely and lie down for 4 hours.
4. Send the plums back to the dryer. In this case, the temperature should already be at least 75 degrees.

This alternation can be repeated for two days. The main thing is that the product remains elastic to the touch and juice does not stand out from the pulp when pressed.

Spicy sweets

There is another original version with which you can easily cook sweet dried plums. In this case, you need very little time, and only s alt, spices and sugar are required as additional ingredients.

The cooking method is somewhat similar to the previous options:

1. Divide the washed plums in the usual way into two halves and remove the seeds from them.
2. After that, they need to be sprinkled with selected additional components. To make dried fruits as sweet as possible, all ingredients except sugar can be completely eliminated.
3. Place the food in the oven for a couple of hours at a temperature of 120 degrees and wait until the slices dry a little. At the same time, they must retain their plasticity.

Finished products will only need to be transferred to clean glass jars and poured with oil. Store food in a cool place with a closed lid. For flavor, along with dried plums, you can put a little garlic. If only sugar was used, this should not be done.