How to Dry Apricots: The Process
Drying Process Overview
The two popular methods of drying apricots are sun drying and through the use of a solar dryer. If you‘re wary about buying dried apricots sold in supermarkets for fear of preservatives, you could make your own dried apricots.
The method recommended here is the sun drying method, especially if you don’t fancy investing in a solar dryer. A solar dryer should be used only if sunshine isn’t available in abundance in your area. Using a solar dryer will speed up the process of drying and will result in a higher quality dried apricot compared to an apricot dried in the sun. A solar dryer could be used if your area has humid weather, which slows down the process of drying and lowers fruit quality.
Preparation
Choose apricots that are ripe enough to be eaten. They should be firm and sweet instead of being soft and sweet. Their color should be anything from dark yellow to orange with a golden tinge. To ensure good quality dried apricots, you should discard damaged, bruised, under-ripe and overripe apricots.
Once you’ve chosen apricots of the required quality, you should wash them in clean water, cut them in two and remove the kernels. At this stage, be careful not to bruise the fruit. You can remove the stones by using running water on the fruit. Before you put the apricots out to dry, you would want to pre-treat them through syrup blanching, or soaking them in fruit juices for a higher quality dried apricot.
Syrup Blanching
Syrup blanching would result in sweeter dried apricots. Mix a cup of sugar, a cup of liquid honey, or glucose with two cups of water. Heat the mixture and bring it to a boil. Then add about 800 grams (1 3/4 pounds) of apricots, and simmer for about ten minutes.
Remove the fruit from the stove and let it soak in the hot syrup about thirty to fifty minutes. Drain the fruit completely, and then gently rinse with cold water before putting the fruit out to dry.
Fruit Juice Dip
Soaking the apricot pieces in fruit juices that contain an abundance of ascorbic acid has a major advantage. It will help preserve the natural color of the fruit and prevent them from darkening. All you would have to do is soak the apricot pieces in orange, pineapple, grapefruit, lemon or lime juice. Remove the fruit pieces and drain well before putting them out to dry.
Drying
After the pre-treatment of the apricot pieces is complete, you are ready to dry the apricot pieces. Sun drying is the preferred method here. Sun drying, however, must be carried out only if the weather is hot and dry. It also helps if the weather is breezy, as it helps the apricot pieces dry faster. In this weather condition, apricot pieces may take from 2 to 4 days to dry.
To keep the apricot pieces free of contamination, you could spread muslin gauze or cheesecloth over them. This would help keep dust, insects and other pollutants from the fruit pieces.
If you’re putting out the apricot pieces to dry in a humid or cloudy weather condition, then the drying process would be much slower, and the resulting fruit quality would be affected. If this is the case, you should switch to a solar dryer.
References
https://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=43 – general information on drying apricots
https://extension.usu.edu/energyconsumer/files/uploads/Preserving%20apricots.pdf – information on preparation of apricots for drying