dried pineapple
Describing the simple step-by-step process of drying pineapple at home with a food dehydrator.
Food: Pineapple
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Dehydrate Time: 16 hours
Total Time: 16 hours 15 minutes
Pineapple is one of the fruits my country is known for, and it is in season all year long.
So I thought, why not make this fruit into a sweet and sour dried fruit snack?
drying pineapple
pineapple
A family friend gave me two pineapples, so now I have two big pineapples laying in my kitchen. Therefore, I decided to eat one fresh and dry the other. Also, these pineapples looked kind of weird because they are “headless”.
This time I used one whole pineapple for drying.
preparing pineapple
To prepare the pineapple, I skinned it and cut it into little chunks. In my twenty-odd years of experience in fruit eating, I have observed that pineapples do not turn brown as fast as apples or bananas, so I skipped the step of placing fruit in salt water or lemon juice.
Then, I spread the pineapple chunks onto the drying trays and stacked the trays on the dehydrator.
Preparing pineapple takes longer—about 15 minutes—because of the skinning of pineapple.
drying pineapple
According to the manual, pineapple dries at 55-60°C for 10-38 hours depending on the size and personal preference.
I left the machine drying overnight and reordered the drying trays to make sure all slices are evenly dried. The pineapple chunks are dried for about 16 hours. The whole kitchen smells of pineapple when they are drying, and the smell is stronger then dehydrating bananas.
dried pineapple
As expected, the pineapple chunks did not oxidise and turn brown. They taste both sweet and sour. The surface of the dried pineapple chunks are sticky because of its high sugar content.
The texture of the dried pineapple chunks are still soft and a bit moist. However, the bigger and thicker pineapple pieces still have a tiny bit of juice left, so maybe next time pineapples should to be dried for a few hours longer.
