Apple Chips

I started this post back in September or October, but it has just been a crazy fall and winter so far. But I have a goal to be more consistent at posting the things we are working on, so hopefully you will hear from me more regularly.

This is also my first time using the Amazon Associates program. I will get a bit of a commission if you click on the link and purchase the product from Amazon.

I have always liked apple chips. Growing up we could buy them from the Church I belong to (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) for food storage. For any who might not be familiar with my church one of the things we are encouraged to do is to be prepared for unforeseen events by having a years supply of food, when it is possible. Anyway, these apple chips were so good. If you have had them you know what I mean. So when I started helping my grandparents with their produce Apple chips seemed like a great way to use up apples. You can only use so much apple sauce and apple juice.

The traditional way to may apple chips is with a food dehydrator. I bought one from Walmart that was around $30. It was probably one of the cheapest ones available. It doesn’t have any bells or whistles, just turns on when it is plugged in. This one on Amazon is the same brand as mine but this one has a few setting options that mine doesn’t have. I can’t vouch for this exact model but it looks like it has good reviews.

To make apple chips on the dehydrator all you need to do is slice the apples and lay them on the trays. Then start your dehydrator. But there are a few other things you can do to make them a little better.

Uniform Slices

Making the slices uniform will help ensure that all the apple pieces dry at the same rate. It also makes them look nicer. You can achieve this with careful knife cuts, or a mandolin style slicer. I am a perfectionist so I was taking forever to get things just right. So shortly after buying the dehydrator we bought an “apple peeler-corer-slicer”. Like this one on Amazon:

That made the process much quicker. All you have to do is run it through this gadget and it will peel off the skin, take out the core and slice it in a uniform spiral. Then I could just slice through the spiral once and get circles or all the way through for semi-circles.

Lemon juice

The next thing that helps is putting a little lemon juice on your apples. While this is not really necessary, they will turn brown from the drying process not mater what, but I felt like it helped them turn less brown. I could be making it up, but it can’t hurt, and it might actually be better from a long term storage perspective.

I usually fill up a big bowl with water and pour a few tablespoons of lemon juice into it. Then, as I am slicing the apples I just drop them into the water. Not only does it give them a bit of lemon juice to keep their color nice but it helps to rinse them one last time. It makes me feel better anyway.

Cinnamon & Sugar

The last item is the most optional but it also can make the difference of how much your end product will get eaten. You can add cinnamon and/or sugar to your apple slices. One year my husband made an apple pie and had some extra apples that had been soaking in lemon juice and cinnamon and sugar. If you have ever made an apple pie, you know what this means. Anyway, he ended up throwing the extras onto the dehydrator with some of my other apple chips and Holy Cow! those were some yummy apple chips.

But usually I just sprinkle the apple slices with some cinnamon and sugar before I spread them on the trays. Or I might spread them on the trays and then sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar. Either way will work just fine.

I can’t be totally sure, I haven’t run any scientific experimentation, but I think the sugar actually helps to make the finished product crisper. But if you have good apples to start with you probably won’t need to add sugar. If you don’t have good apples, or if they are only mediocre, you can almost make up for it with the seasoning. I bet you could also try some other seasonings, like ginger or nutmeg. If it’s good in apple pie it will be good on apple chips.

Dehydrate

The last step is to spread them out and dry them. Obviously, you can use a dehydrator for this, but if you don’t have a dehydrator then you can also dry apples in the oven, set at the lowest setting you can get. Either way, it is hard to say how long it will take to get them dry. There are a lot of factors, like how wet they were to start with, how thick you sliced them, how hot your oven or dehydrator is, and so on. So your best bet is just to keep an eye on them. If you have to go to bed before they are done you may want to turn off your oven or dehydrator and finish in the morning. If they are mostly dry it will be better to do this rather than over drying them. Unless you want them super crispy.

Freeze Dryer

We have been freeze drying apples this year. We did a bunch last year for the first time and we really liked them. We bought the large freeze dryer from Harvest Right. (You can click on the side bar add if you would like to know more about that product.)

This year my husband actually kept track of how many apples we got on each batch. He figures we did about 9-10 apples per tray, and since there are 5 trays we usually used about 50 apples per batch. That amount is just an estimate obviously because apples have such a variety of sizes. But it at least gives us a ball-park.

When we packaged the finished product we usually filled 4 of our large “gallon” sized Mylar bags, or about 20 of the green 7×9 inch ones.

These are soooo yummy! They taste just like the original apple, but now they are crunchy. They also retain most of their nutritional value. We don’t have to add any sugar to them so they are super healthy. Plus they are shelf stable for over 10 years. It has been a pretty awesome way to go for us. But if you don’t have that many apples, dehydrating is way cheaper and just as easy. Although the dehydrated apple chips should probably be eaten within a year or so.

Storage

I have started storing most of my dehydrated and freeze dried fruit in glass mason jars. I just feel like the taste is better. I have a “Food Saver” like this one:

I bought the mason jar attachment so I can suck most of the air out of the jar. It is great for short term storage (about a year or less). For long term storage we usually use Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers in them. Let me know if you want to know more about that.