It’s Fall in the Midwest and one of our many rites of passage before winter has us in it’s grasp is to head to one of the apple orchards in the area to pick our own apples.  Since I have an organic requirement, the apple orchard we went to is a little further away but the apples are well worth it. We stood at one tree and picked 20 lbs of Cortlands and then moved a few rows over to the Ida Reds and stood at one tree and picked another 20 lbs of apples.  We were done and heading back home in twenty minutes. So, I have 40 lbs of apples to use up, and I am so very gleeful about this.  The next day I pulled my apple peeler, corer and slicer out of storage. It is an absolute must if you are working with more than a few apples.  My first apple project was dehydrated apples.  My daughter’s boyfriend’s father is a big dehydrating guy,  and he gifted a few bags of dried apples to me in exchange for fresh eggs.  I absolutely loved the flavor, so I bugged both the boyfriend and later the father for the recipe.  He gave me a few, invaluable steps, and as you will see, I ran with them.

Gather your apples.  I used about a dozen or 6 lbs of apples, and I used the Courtlands(I’m saving the Idas for eatin’)

I used this handy kitchen gadget to core and slice the apples. It saves a lot of time, and it also slices the apples uniformly.

I poured a cup of pineapple juice with a half cup of lemon juice, and I put the apples in this liquid to both keep them from turning brown and to add sweetness.

I spooned about two cups of the sliced apples into a bag with a little juice and a half teaspoon of cinnamon, and I shook until all of the apples were evenly covered. Repeat with all apples and refresh the cinnamon with each bag.

Here are the apples before going into the dehydrator. I used all ten trays and set the temperature to 135 degrees for 8 hours. I didn’t want to completely dry the apples, so I kept the drying time shorter.

This was the first time dehydrating apples, and I have to admit, these turned out to be quite tasty.