Apple Chips - My first attempt!

Jamie got a dehydrator because he wants to make his own beef jerky. Cue Step Brothers jokes here.

That's all well and good, but because I'm not really a meat-snack kind of girl, I'm excited that I now get to use it for healthy snackage purposes. But first...

THE RECIPE!!!!!

Most food blogs will make you scroll and scroll through all the fluff and stuff before telling you what you really want to know. 

Ingredients

• Apples
• 1/2 of a lemon
• Cinnamon
• Sugar

Method (and story time)

One of the many unique things about this country is how the produce compares to that of California. California itself is so large that it is in the top 5 GLOBAL economies (at least, as of 2018 it was). Its location is perfect for growing everything from avocados to citrus to almonds. Sure we have rampant wildfires every summer and earthquakes, but hey, at least we don't have hurricanes or tornados, am I right?

That being said, England is much farther north, much colder, and much wetter than southern California ever got. So their fruit and vegetable selection differs by loads! There are varieties of potatoes and apples that I have never seen in the UK...and everything is a lot smaller. While I prefer a lovely Honeycrisp apple for snacking, I couldn't find any in my local Aldi. Could be because I was in Aldi and their fresh produce selection is limited. So, I got a bag of Jazz apples. Never heard of em, but let's try em out, shall we?

I am a hater of kitchen gadgets. I think they take up space, and we don't have much. So I sliced the apples by hand and soaked them in a bowl of lemon water. I just used half a lemon for this big bowl seen here. The slices would have been more even if I had cut them in half, but I wanted to see how they would look if I cut them in rounds with that cute little star shape in the middle. It was a pain the ass to do without a mandoline, but it was worth it to do it like that, and I will do it again.

Next, rather than dump all the apples into the colander, I just picked them up out of the bowl and put them into the colander to drain. I wanted to save the water in case I needed to cut more apples. (I initially cut up four of them, but after seeing how much I had, I decided to cut up the last two.)

Using cinnamon and sugar was a choice, and it is not a choice I'm likely to repeat. I've had apple chips and other dehydrated fruit with no sugar added. Adding sugar defeats the purpose of a healthy snack, but hey WHY NOT?! I combined the cinnamon and sugar and tossed the apple chips to lightly coat. I wasn't looking for a full on sugar coating, just a dusting. Some got more of it than others.

I will put my disclaimer here. If you do not learn from my mistake and you choose to use sugar, either use a non-stick liner (our dehydrator came with them), or grease your trays.

Next, I set the trays in the dehydrator at 60℃. 

And off they go!

The timer on the machine starts at 10 hours, and the manual recommends 60-65℃ for 7 to 12 hours. By the time I actually put everything in the machine, it was at 9 and a half hours.

I left it alone, checking it every few hours. The thinner slices would dehydrate faster than others, and I was looking for a texture between crispy and pliable. I didn't want them to be too rubbery in texture, and I had never worked with these apples before. Long story short, by the time they were done, I had eaten about 1/4 of them.

Finally, roughly 10 hours later, they were ready!

I used a large offset spatula to remove them from the tray and put them in a 1.5 quart ziploc bag.

They are Jamie-tested and approved. I tend to be more critical of my efforts than he is, and because he is so amazing and supportive, he loves everything I do because I do it with heart.

I already have ideas for my next batch, and I can't wait to give them a try.

Be kind to one another! Thanks for following!

-A