Dehydrating Apples

Here in the northland we are in the odd time of year where the weather is still mostly warm, punctuated by random cool days as fall approaches.  That means abundant tomatoes and other garden vegetables along with the early apple harvest.

We do not have our own apple trees.  If we had planned on staying in this house we would have planted two or three apple varieties this spring.

But even without trees we have an abundance of apple orchards nearby.  So this morning we went on our first apple picking of the season.  My little girl loves riding around on her daddy's shoulders so she can pick from the top of the apple trees.  She makes us run through the orchard while she chooses what apples she thinks we should bring home.  She actually does a pretty good job of picking apples.

Today's adventure was to bring home apples to be dehydrated into apple chips.  Apple chips are a staple winter snack for us.  Sour apples keep the best dried flavor so we tend to choose sour varieties and under-ripe sweet varieties.  However, not all rows of trees in the orchard are labeled so the variety picked it is often a mystery to us.

Today we picked a peck of apples.  Sounds like a nursery rhyme I know.  A peck of apples is right about 30 apples, give or take, depending on the size of the apples.

The first thing I do is soak the apples in a clean kitchen sink filled with water and a couple of cups of vinegar.  This washes off the outside of the apples not only field dirt but any chemicals that may have been applied directly to the orchard or that have drifted on to the apples from nearby corn and bean fields. 

After the apples have had a good vinegar bath, one by one I peel the apples with a vegetable peeler then slice them with my apple slicer and corer gadget. 

I used to have one of those gizmos that would peel, slice and core the apples but it was so hard to keep in alignment it usually ended up mangling the apples which frustrated me to no end.  So I unceremoniously dropped it into the recycling bin and got this little baby instead.  Yes it makes me peel the apples by hand but frankly it takes less than a minute to peel an apple so it really isn't a big deal.

  

Next I center my apple corer slicer gadget over the top of the apple then cut through giving me nice neat slices.

Next I trim off any left over apple peel.  The apple peels make eating the dried apple chips unpleasant to me.  It is the texture of the peel that I really do not like so I make sure to take all the peel off before drying.  After that I arrange the slices on the dehydrator screens fitting them tightly but without touching.  I get about two apples worth of slices per level of my dehydrator.



Lastly I close up the dehydrator and plug it in.  I usually let it run in the garage so the sound of the fan motor doesn't drive me crazy.  I will let the dehydrator run overnight.  It will take about 8 to 10 hours to dry the apple slices depending upon how thick the slices are and the humidity at the time (also depending a lot on your dehydrator).  I like my dried apples to be bendable and a little chewy.  Letting the slices continue to dehydrate beyond that point gives a very crisp dried chip that will easily break in half.  They taste about the same but I like the chewy texture better.

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Fire Roasted Peppers How To and Recipe

So this year while most of our crops are floundering... still... mid-august... our peppers are having a fabulous year.  The reason for this is simple; we grow our peppers in large pots.  Peppers, like tomatoes and cucumbers require warm soil to produce well.  Here in the great northern plains the soil takes forever to warm up.  This year in particular. 

However, the soil in a pot heats up very fast because there just isn't a lot of soil to heat compared to an entire garden.  We have four large pots we grow in, two in the front yard and two in the back. The pots are sitting on the paver patios in full sun so they soak in a lot of heat. 

This year we are growing a number of different bell and banana peppers as well as some jalapeño and Serrano peppers.  I have stuffed them, sautéed them, pickled them, hot sauced them, and added them to everything I can think of.  I have also given so many away the neighbors are no longer willing to take any.

Which leads me to this post.  Today I decided to fire roast a number of them.  Fire roasting brings out a wonderful flavor in the peppers as well as add a little smokiness.  All you need is a flame, some peppers, tongs, and a paper bag.  This time I have chosen to use the flame on my gas cooktop.  A gas grill or even a camp stove would work... of course do those outside.  Since I am still in my PJ's in the middle of the day, I opted for my cooktop. 

Turn on the flame and drop a pepper or two into the fire.  You will probably want to turn your hood fan on to high and maybe even open a window; this can get a little smoky. 

You are trying to blister and blacken the peppers' skin.  You do not need to turn the skin into a dark grey ash as I have seen some people do.  As the peppers blacken you may notice them popping a bit.  Do not panic, the pepper is not going to explode.

As each side of the pepper blackens, turn to reach all sides.  Don't walk away during this process.  Once a pepper is blacken, drop it into a paper bag and close the bag up.  Keep adding peppers to the bag until they are all fire roasted.  Let the peppers cool in the bag with the top closed.  This allows the peppers to steam and the skin to loosen.

Once cool, you will remove the blackened skin.  Rubbing the peppers with your fingers or a paper towel works well.  If you roasted hot peppers you will want to wear gloves for this.  You also may want to keep a bowl of water handy to clean off your fingers.  Try to resist the urge to wash off the peppers.

Once the skin is removed, half the pepper and carefully remove the seeds and veins.  Voilà fire roasted peppers.

Skins removed ready to use

Now what?  There are a huge number of things you can do with these fire roasted pepper filets.  Use them in salsa or in bruschetta. Add them to a salad or to top a pizza.  They make a yummy soup too.
I plan on marinating some of mine. 

Marinated fire roasted peppers:

Fire roasted peppers
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
pinch of kosher salt
3 cloves garlic, crushed then diced
1 teaspoon prepared mustard (it helps keep the oil and vinegar mixed together longer)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano or basil (optional), if you use fresh make it 1 Tbls finely chopped

In a glass jar mix all the ingredients together well.  Close lid and shake until combined.  Store in refrigerator for at least an hour shaking occasionally. I used the roasted bell peppers in the marinade.  They were soooooo good.  You need to try this!

Marinated roasted peppers

You can eat these as a side dish or use them in any of the ways I listed above.  Use your imagination and let me know what you come up with.  We ate them as a stand alone side dish.

Fire roasted pepper filets in wax paper

With the fire roasted banana peppers and the jalapeños I laid the filets on wax paper making a stack with the wax paper between them.  I wrapped the wax paper in plastic wrap then put the whole package in a ziptop bag to be stored in the freezer.  Whenever my tomatoes decide to ripen, I will add the fire roasted peppers to salsa I will make with the peppers.

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Storing Onions

So you may remember my post on Harvesting Onions with all those beautiful onions hanging on a ladder in my garage to cure.

Well those onions have now dried and look like this. 

 

The next step is to cut them down and put them into storage waiting to be used up.  With proper storage these onions will last many, many months.

The first thing I did was cut the bunches down by cutting the twine off the ladder.  Next I cut each onion off of the bunch with scissors cutting the next about an inch or two above the onion bulb.  A few of the larger onions still had wet necks, meaning the stem growing out of the top of the onion was still wet of juicy when I cut it.  These onions need to dry more or they will not store properly.  I moved these into my kitchen to be used first, just in case.

Ready to move from the garage into long term storage

I have a pantry downstairs which is underground.  It stays cool and dry all year long.  That is the perfect place for my onions.  There are a number of ways to store onions.  Some people use bins with lots of small holes to allow for air circulation.  Some people encase the onions in panty hose, knotting between the onions then cutting off onions as needed.

I use this hanging mesh toy storage thingee I purchased from IKEA years ago. 

I put the onions in a single layer in each level of the mess hanging thingee (what is this thing called anyway).  The mesh allows for sufficient air circulation around the onions. 

I check the onions periodically to look for any that are getting soft, smell bad, or have sprouted. Remove any of those types of onions immediately to keep the rest of the onions from going bad.

Keep in mind that home grown onions will not store as long as grocery store onions because grocery store onions are sprayed with a sprout inhibitor right before they are cured.  Homegrown onions often try to sprout before the next year's onion crop is ready.  You can eat sprouted onions.  Just don't leave sprouted onions to set with the rest of the storage onions too long.

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Harvesting Onions

This weekend it was time to harvest our onions.  Most years we grow two or three varieties of onion from seed with the goal of planting enough onions to last until the next year's harvest.  This year with the weird weather not allowing us to get seed into the garden early enough, and with our thoughts on moving (how much stored produce do we really want to move across country) we planted a small number of onions from sets.  Well a small number for us anyway.

An onion set is a small onion bulb.  Some grower somewhere planted onion seeds and grew them for a while until each seed grew into an onion bulb about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch in diameter.  The grower harvested all these little bulbs, cured them, bagged them up, then sold them to a middlemen who sold them to a retailer who sold them to me. 

We took the bag of onion sets home, prepared a garden bed for them and planted them in the soil.  Two months (give or take) later the onions were ready to harvest.  Onions tell you when they are ready to harvest by falling over.  Garlic does the same thing.  Rather handy actually.  If you leave the onions in the ground after they fall over, it won't be long before all those green onion tops dry out and eventually blow away making it difficult to find the onions.  So I try to harvest before the tops dry out.

Onions laying down and ready to harvest

Harvesting onions is simple in a properly prepared bed.  Grab the neck of the onion as close to the top of the bulb as you can and gently pull.  Usually the onions pull out easily.  In the picture below you can see how few roots the onion bulb has.  While it was growing it had a much larger mass of roots. 

Pull gently

I put all the onions into trugs for easy hauling around the yard.

Onions harvested, now the real work begins

Now that the onions are all harvested, we have to do something with them.  If I only grew a few, I would just rinse them off and keep them in the kitchen to be used up.  But I have more than a few days worth of onions so I need a way to store them for a longer time.  In order to store onions, they need to be properly cured.  Curing is a process where the outer layer of the onion bulb and the neck of the onion (the place where the green top grows out of the bulb) is dried so that the onion inside stays usable for months and months.

I like to rinse the dirt off of the onions before I cure them.  First I laid the onions out on the driveway in a single layer.

Laid out and ready for a rinse

Next I rinsed the dirt off the onions with the hose.  My helper had great fun with this task.

My helper

As you can see from the before and after rinsing pictures below, this is not going to make the onions dirt free.  But it will make them a lot cleaner.

Before

After - not perfect but much cleaner

Once the onions are all rinsed, I leave them on the driveway to dry out for a couple of hours. 

Rinsed off and left to dry

After the onions dried out on the driveway for a couple of hours it was time to tie them up in bunches.  Depending upon the size of the onions, I group them into bunches of 6 to 10 onions then tie up each bunch with twine.  I use 18 to 24 inches of twine for each bunch.  After each bunch is tied up, I cut off the green tops 8 to 10 inches or so above the twine. 

Tied and ready to cure

In the picture above you can see all the onions tied up in neat bunches ready to cure. 

The pile of onions above the bunches are onions that either did not have a green top to tie up (because I pulled the top off while trying to get the onion out of the ground) or were not really fit to be cured.  A few of the onions had really thick or big necks.  An onion with a large neck will not cure well.  Usually those onions rot after a month or so of harvest because the neck never dries out "sealing" the onion inside.  So this pile of onions I just move into the kitchen to be used up first.

The last step in curing the onions is to store them somewhere where they will get lots of air circulation and be able to dry out the outer layers and neck properly.  For us, this is our garage.  It is warm all summer and has ceiling fans running constantly.  I hang the onion bunches on a ladder in the garage and leave them there for 2 to 3 weeks until they are ready for storage in a cool pantry in our basement.  Someday I hope for a root cellar.  For more information about storing onions, see my Storing Onions post here.

Curing

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Dutch Oven Bread - Only Four Ingredients!

Dutch Oven Bread - So Simple!

I must admit that the first time I came upon this recipe I was skeptical.  Over the years I have learned to read through a recipe and get a feel for whether or not it is worth a try; meaning can I pull it off successfully and will my family eat it?

So when I found this recipe a couple of years ago I was dubious.  I have been baking my own bread (admittedly sporadically) for several years now and, though I know I still have lots to learn, I felt I had a pretty good handle on the basics of bread making.  And this recipe did not look like it had a chance to work.  But after stumbling upon it a few more times in various places I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a try. 

It worked.  Beautifully.  It actually worked beautifully the first time.  And then I tried it again and it worked beautifully the second time too.  And the third.  And so on. 

This bread is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside.  It makes a good serve-with-dinner bread or an even better serve-with-soup or stew bread. 

For ingredients you will need:

3 cups flour
1 3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups of water
1/2 teaspoon yeast

For equipment you will  need:

One large bowl for the dough to rise in
One Dutch Oven
Plastic wrap for the top of the bowl
A big spoon.  One of those spoon-ulas (half spoon, half rubber bowl scraper spatula thingees) works best.

My Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Four simple ingredients!

Into the big bowl put all the ingredients in no particular order. 

Ingredients before mixing

Mix together with the big spoon.  The mixing takes less than a minute.  The mixture will be gooey and messy looking.

All Mixed Up

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave on counter overnight.  In other words, do not put this in the refrigerator. 

Ready to set on the counter all night

You want the dough to have 12 to 18 hours to just sit and rise. 

After sitting on counter about 14 hours

The next day after the dough has risen put the Dutch Oven into a cold oven and heat oven to 450 degrees.  After the oven is preheated, set the timer for 30 minutes and leave the Dutch Oven in your now heated oven.

While the Dutch Oven heats up, turn the dough out onto a heavily floured surface and with heavily floured hands shape into a ball.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let set covered on the counter for 30 minutes.

Remove Dutch Oven from the oven, remove the lid and carefully put dough into Dutch Oven, recover with lid and put Dutch Oven back into the 450 degree oven for 30 minutes.  Be careful! The Dutch oven is 450 degrees and so is the lid.

Ready to Cook

After 30 minutes remove the lid, briefly admire the bread you are baking, then put the now uncovered Dutch Oven back into the 450 degree oven for another 15 minutes. Remember these last 15 minutes are without the lid.

After 30 minutes with lid on

Remember to put the lid somewhere you won't bump into it.  My cast iron lid takes a very long time to cool down.

After the 15 minutes are up, remove the Dutch Oven from the oven, remove the bread from the Dutch Oven and allow to cool on a wire rack. 

All done! Ready to cool on wire rack.

Use pot holders to get the bread out so you don't burn yourself.  Now stand there and admire your work!  I know I always do.

So after I made this awesome bread it was time to cook dinner.  What could I do with a very hot Dutch Oven?  Apparently lots of things.  Scroll down to my next post to see The Dinner After.

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