How To Preserve Fruits?
When is time for spring you will find yourself surrounded by a wide range of fruits and vegetables that will entice you throughout the summer and spring, which you would like to carry and preserve them for the winter. Hence, through this blog I am going to share some easy tips on how to preserve fruits for winter.
Tips To Preserve Fruits
Common methods used to preserve fruits include brining, soaking in syrup, freezing, jams and jellies, smoking pectin, preparing sauce and drying. Follow these simple steps to preserve all fruits in a simple way for winter
1. Fruits in Syrup or brine:
Prepare a solution of ascorbic acid in the ration of three grams per gallon of pure water and soak the fruits in this acid to prevent the darkening of fruits. You can always replace the ascorbic acid with lemon juice and rinds in a much smaller quantities.
2. Fruits in Syrup:
There are two ways you can preserve fruits: sweetened and unsweetened. Sweetened fruits are use as fillings in pies or other fruit fillings, by dipping them is sugar syrup, which is made by dissolving sugar in pure water and do not do anything for the unsweetened fruits. Fruits can be packed in light, medium or heavy syrup, while light syrup is the most preferred method as this lasts long.
3. Frozen Fruits:
The next step is to freeze individual batches of fruits and pack them in freezer bags so that you will be able to eat them in small amounts and is a healthy way to eat them as and when needed by thawing them.
4. Jams and Jellies:
Jam, jelly and preserves are the best ways to relish your fruits on a long-term basis, even during off-season. Jam has pieces or smashed fruits, while preserves contain whole fruits.
5. Adding pectin:
This can firm up the fruits and increase the shelf life in fruits that will stay longer time without succumbing to rotting.
6 . Prepare Fruit sauce:
This is the fruit preservation method adopted for fruits like peaches, apples, pears which when cooked on big stoves turn into a sauce with a buttery version that can be used as spreads and stored in freezer bags or processed further using canning methods.
7. Dehydration or drying:
Dried fruits for fruits like figs, peaches, pears, raisins, jackfruits is one of the common preparations that aids in preserving the fruits well for your winter needs. Fruits are dried in a dehydrator or sun dryer to remove more than 80 percent of the water, pressed and are packed in plastic wraps or glass airtight containers. Fruits are preserved as slices or in whole, while the whole pressed and dried fruits are common in occurrence.
Now that you know how to preserve fruits how about trying out some of ifoodie fruit recipes for a delectable treat.
Image credits: thehydratedhorseblog.com