Best Way to Dehydrate Plums - Oops!

If you read this blog much, you know I dehydrate just about everything. My plum tree is full of yummy plums and the birds and bees are having a luscious buffet taking bites out of each and destroying the fruit. I clean off the lawn several times a day with all of the fruit they are ruining.

I needed to get them off the tree quickly so I picked a bunch and was putting them on the dehydrator when Princess number three had a date arrive to pick her up. I hadn't met him before so we were visiting and I told him I was sorry for the wet hands and apron as I was dehydrating plums.

Her date then asked "How do you dehydrate plums?" I asked if he wanted to see. He did. So, I showed him how I dehydrate plums.

I had princess number 5 help me video me dehydrating plums and how I do it. Funny thing when you watch the video on the camera, it looks like everything was fine. Obviously we don't use that camera much to do video because when I looked at it on the computer to put it up on here, it is sideways!

However, the information is still good information so I will post the video anyway and I will also detail in pictures how I like to best dry my plums. I have posted something similar before but I will go ahead and post it as I did want a video of it and the information is a bit varied giving different details. Here is the link to that post if you are interested. It will just bring a smile to my face now every time I see the video. There is a learning curve with electronics.

First, pick and wash the fruit. Only pick as much as you will use as they can go mushy. If you need to pick them all, wash them and use the softest fruit first layering the others without piling them on as this squishes the fruit.

I try to cut the fruit on the side rather than from the top or the bottom. It is better explained on the video but from the side, you get round discs rather than a hole in the center from the pit in each piece. From the side only one or two of the slices around the pit are in pieces rather than every piece from the top down.

Here is a photo of the two side by side. The one on the left is cut from the top down and you can see how they are not round and are more in pieces and aren't as uniform in shape and size. Where as the one's on the right are round, uniform, and much easier to cut and turn for dehydrating as they don't rip when you take them off the drying tray.

Watch them closely when you dry them as they can get over done and burn or get really crisp depending on the dehydrator you use. The dehydrator in the video burnt out this weekend and that is about the fifth or sixth dehydrator I have burned up as I use it about weekly. Thank heavens I had one last one that I almost donated to a second hand store this week.

Once they are dry, I suggest Tupperware to store them. Here is my post on the reason I only use Tupperware.

Lastly, if the fruit is really ripe, you can blend it and make fruit leather but I don't have those trays for this dehydrator so I froze the mushy fruit to use in fruit smoothies. However, you can make some great jam using the ripe fruit as well. We don't eat much jam so we use the fruit in a shake format.

Thanks for being understanding about the video. We'll get it right next time. Enjoy the harvest month! I tried several times on the video and it wouldn't upload so I didn't want to change the whole post. Maybe next time.