Good afternoon, my dear readers!

We have an incredible amount of plums this year. And all this on our personal plot, with our dear and beloved mother - grandmother. This September we collected, neither less nor more, about seven 10-liter buckets of sweet and delicious plums!

Now we just enjoy it - we eat it in the quantities we desire, which are simply unlimited, and we treat it to friends and acquaintances. There is no one in our family who does not like this fruit, so a 5-liter bucket per day is easy and simple))

And yet, I managed to freeze the fruits for the winter, make some jam and prepare the healthiest homemade prunes, the recipe for which is now before your eyes. In one of the next posts I will publish a recipe for a French plum dessert. Check it out!

I chose the dried prune option. You can also make it dried, which cooks faster. You just need to store it in a sterile, closed jar, preferably in the refrigerator. Dried prunes can be stored well in a linen bag or paper bag at room temperature.

Cooking prunes at home

Ingredients:

• Plum - about 2 kg

Dried product yield: 900g

My cooking method:

1. Wash and pit the plums

2. Place the fruits on a baking sheet covered with foil, which can be greased with a very thin layer of vegetable oil, which I did not do.

3. Turn on the oven at 80 - 100ºС and place a baking sheet there, slightly opening the oven door

4. After about three hours, you can turn off the oven and close it until it cools down. During this time, the released juice will evaporate

5. Turn on the oven again with temperature = 80ºС, open the door and dry for another 8-9 hours. You can leave the dried fruits in the oven turned off overnight so that the moisture from the fruit completely evaporates

Ready! We taste it and put it in storage bags.

If you want to receive dried plums, then the whole process will take you 5-6 hours. Only you must first turn on the oven at 120ºC and do not open it until the juice has evaporated, then turn off the oven, as in the case of drying plums. And turn it back on at 70-80ºС, open the oven door slightly and continue the drying process.

Good luck with your cooking! I look forward to your comments.

Join my groups

Most often, varieties such as Hungarian, cherry plum, Renklod and Kyustendil plums are used for drying, but other varieties of plums can also be used.

Small fruits are dried whole, large ones are cut in half and pitted to speed up the process.

Regardless of the drying method, the plums are first sorted, selecting only strong, ripe fruits without damage.

Prepared fruits can be dried in the oven, electric dryer or in the sun.

Drying plums in the oven

Before drying, whole fruits should be blanched for 1–2 minutes in boiling water, in which 2 teaspoons of soda were previously dissolved. Next, the plums are washed with cold water and blotted with a towel.

Blanching is carried out so that small cracks appear on the surface of the fruit, which are necessary for the evaporation of moisture. If the plums were cut in half before drying, there is no need for blanching.

The easiest way to pit plums is to cut them along the pit and turn both halves in opposite directions. This way the plum will easily split into two parts, one of which will have a pit. After this it will be easy to remove it.

Drying plums in the oven is carried out in several stages at different temperatures. First, the oven is heated to 50 degrees, a baking sheet with plums is placed in it for 5 hours, after which the fruit should cool for the same amount of time.

At the second stage, the oven is heated to 70 degrees, the inverted plums continue to dry for 5 hours. Then the temperature increases to 75 degrees, at which the plums are cooked until cooked.

Drying plums in an electric dryer

For drying in an electric dryer, plums are blanched in the same way as for drying in an oven.

The fruits are laid out on a tray in one layer; if they are cut in half, cut side up.

The drying process is carried out in 3 stages at different temperature conditions:

• 3–4 hours at a temperature of 45–55 degrees;
• 3–6 hours at 60 degrees;
• 3–6 hours at a temperature of 75–80 degrees.

At each stage, the pallets need to be swapped once an hour. At the end of each stage, the trays must be removed from the dryer in order to cool the plums to room temperature within a few hours.

How to dry plums in the sun

In a natural way, plums are dried on wooden sheets. The seedless plum halves are placed on the sheet not too tightly, cut side up, so that the plums do not lose juice when drying.

Plums should be exposed to the sun for 4–5 days, depending on the size of the fruit.

You need to make sure that flies or wasps do not land on them, otherwise such a product may contain harmful bacteria.

They should be brought indoors at night, and taken out into the air in the morning after dew has fallen, otherwise the fruits will become damp.

During the drying process, the plums are periodically turned over so that they dry evenly on all sides.

After drying in the sun, the plums are dried in the shade for another 3–4 days.

Determining the quality of dried fruits

The readiness of dried fruits is determined by the following criteria:

• when pressed, no cracks appear and no juice is released;
• dried fruits should be elastic, hard, but should not crumble when pressed;
• the fruits should not stick to your hands.

Dried plums should be stored in a well-ventilated area. Suitable containers include fabric bags, paper bags and boxes made of wood or cardboard.

Storage in glass jars is allowed, while the plums are sprinkled with granulated sugar. Products with a strong odor should not be placed near dried fruits, because dried plums can absorb it.

You can make marshmallow from plums - a delicious and healthy dessert. The recipes for its preparation are quite varied, but they all boil down to preparing plum puree, which is dried in thin layers.

Required ingredients:

• plums - 1 kg;
• sugar - 1 glass.

If desired, you can replace sugar with honey, and also add your favorite spices: cloves, cinnamon, etc.

Ripe plums must be washed and removed from stems and seeds. The pastille puree can be prepared on the stove or in the oven.

In the first case, you need cast iron or non-stick cookware, pour 1 cm of water into the bottom and add chopped plums.

The dish is covered with a lid, the plums are cooked for 1 hour over low heat, there is no need to stir them.

Then the plum mass is removed from the heat and cooled.

The cooled plums are rubbed through a sieve. The puree is cooked with the addition of sugar over low heat for 1 hour with continuous stirring.

In the second case, finely chopped plums are placed in a heat-resistant container and simmered under a closed lid in the oven at medium temperature. After the juice appears, sugar is added to them, the mass is mixed and returned to the oven. When the sugar is completely dissolved, the plums are cooled and rubbed through a sieve.

The finished puree is laid out in a thin layer on a baking sheet. To avoid burning, it is pre-lined with parchment paper. The layer of puree should not be made too thin, otherwise the finished pastille will tear when removed. A layer of puree that is too thick will not dry well. The optimal thickness is 3–6 mm.

The pastille is dried in the sun or in the oven. The marshmallow should be air-dried on dry, hot days, bringing it indoors at night. This process usually takes several days. You can also dry the marshmallow in an oven preheated to 40 degrees.

The finished marshmallow sheets are rolled into tubes or cut into slices and stored in a cool, dry place. It is necessary to ensure that the pastille does not become damp during storage. If necessary, repeat the drying procedure.

Regardless of the drying method, properly prepared dried fruits can be stored for a long time. At the same time, they retain all the beneficial properties of fresh plums.

The best plum variety for making homemade prunes with pits is Hungarian. It has juicy, sweet flesh and tolerates short heat treatment well. Prunes at home Hungarian produces a rich black color with a shiny surface. It can be used as an independent dessert, added to salads or added to sauces for meat. Prunes help strengthen the immune system, enhance intestinal motility, slow down the growth of bacteria, and normalize the functioning of the cardiovascular system.

Ingredients:

• Hungarian plum – 1 kg;
• granulated sugar – 1 kg;
• water – 400 ml;
• baking soda – 1 tsp.

How to cook homemade prunes with pits

One kilogram of fresh plums yields about 250 g of prunes with pits.

For drying, you need to select ripe fruits. They must have intact, intact skin and firm flesh. The use of wormy plums is unacceptable. Remove the stems and rinse the plums thoroughly under running water.

It is impossible to wash off the whitish coating from the surface of the fruit. It should be removed with a weak alkaline solution. To do this, you need to boil 1 liter of water. Then pour 1 tsp into it. soda

Dip plums into the resulting solution for 30 seconds. Then quickly transfer them to cold water. It is better to do this in small portions. In this case, the solution should boil all the time. If the plaque cannot be removed the first time, the procedure can be repeated. Fruits treated in this way will not only become more attractive in appearance, but will also dry faster under the sun. This happens due to the microcracks that form on the skin of the plums during blanching.

Then you should prepare a syrup from granulated sugar dissolved in 400 ml of water. It must be brought to a boil. To prevent the sugar from burning, you need to stir it periodically until it is completely dissolved.

Place plums in boiling syrup and let them cook for 5 minutes.

Then the fruits should be removed with a slotted spoon and transferred to a metal colander. The liquid draining from the plum must be collected and poured into syrup.

After 30 minutes, the fruits must be laid out on a tray and placed under the sun for 10–12 hours.

Then the plums should be put back into the syrup and cooked for 5 minutes. Next, all steps are repeated until the plums wrinkle.

When buying dried plums, you may encounter a problem: they are either expensive or of poor quality. Therefore, it will be easier and more profitable to smoke yourself. Making prunes at home is not difficult: you just need to know the recipe, stock up on plums, sugar and spend a little time preparing for drying.

Smoking plums in the oven

The recipe for drying plums in the oven is one of the simplest, as it requires minimal human intervention. You can make prunes in about a day, and when they are ready, feel free to add them to any dishes or eat them as an independent food. Smoked plums can be stored for a long time, and you don’t have to worry about them going bad quickly.

Ingredients:

• plums - 1 kg;
• water - 0.5 l;
• sugar - 500 g.

Every housewife should take into account the fact that 1 kg of prunes comes from approximately 4 kg of plums. During the cooking process, they dry out, lose their juice and along with it their mass. Based on this, you need to calculate the desired amount of product that can be obtained as a result of cooking.

Smoking plums is as easy as shelling pears

The plums need to be sorted out and any wormy ones should be discarded, if any, and the remaining ones should be washed and cut into halves. Remove the bones and discard. Now we need to make syrup, the recipe for which is very simple. Boil water with sugar over high heat, then reduce the flame and add plums to the syrup. Bring everything together to a boil. Then turn off the heat, strain off the syrup and place the fruits on a baking sheet next to each other. Sprinkle each half generously with sugar.

Smoked prunes can be cooked in the oven at a minimum temperature (40°C). It is necessary to dry in several passes: first, keep the temperature at no higher than 45°C for 4 hours, then increase it to 60°C for 4 hours, and finally increase it to 80-90°C. Every 4 hours you need to remove the baking sheet from the oven and allow the fruits to cool. If this is not done, they may burst and lose juice.

The recipe calls for cooling the finished product for about 3 hours. When cooking at home, it is recommended to turn warm fruits over so that they dry evenly.

Smoked prunes will be ready when they darken, acquire a matte hue with a slight coating and become elastic. This will also mean that it is prepared without the use of chemicals. The finished ingredient should be stored in a dry place at a temperature of 0 to 20°C. To prevent it from getting damp, you can put it in paper bags.

Drying plums in the sun

The most natural way to cook at home is to smoke prunes in direct sunlight. The recipe is especially suitable for those who want to make it at the dacha, where they have their own plot, but no oven.

What you will need:

1. plums;
2. gauze;
3. wooden sheets.

The fruits need to be washed, wormy and rotten areas removed, and then cut in half. The seeds should be removed from the fruit. The halves should be laid out on wooden sheets with the cut side up, not right next to each other, so that they can dry thoroughly. If you place the fruit cut side down, the juice will flow out and the smoked prunes will not be juicy enough.

Dried plum

Fruits should only be placed outdoors on hot days, in bright sunshine. The plums need to be covered with gauze to prevent flies from landing on them. They will have to stand in the sun for about 6-7 days. They should be removed indoors at night. Every day the halves need to be turned over so that they dry evenly. This recipe has only one drawback: insects can get under the gauze.

Drying plums in an electric dryer

This recipe is perfect for cooking at home. Fruits are cooked in an electric dryer almost the same way as in an oven. The fruits will need to be washed, sorted and cut into two equal parts. After this, you need to boil water with sugar and soda and boil the plums in this syrup.

After this, they are laid out in one layer to dry thoroughly. If you place the halves in bulk, some may not be fully cooked, and it will take more time. They need to be placed cut side up to preserve juiciness and beneficial elements. The electric dryer is turned on and the temperature is set to 50°C. Dry in this mode for about 4 hours, then let the fruits cool and heat again (at a temperature of 60°C). After 5 hours, you need to turn off the dryer again and cool the plums. Then the temperature is increased to 80°C and the fruit is left for 6 hours. Now they should be ready. If everything is done correctly, the product will taste even better than store-bought.

Drying plums in an electric dryer

Note to housewives: cutting plums is not necessary, although it is advisable to do so. In halves they will dry faster and are easier to eat. Some claim that fruits with seeds retain more nutrients, but this has not been proven. Therefore, everyone decides for themselves which recipe to choose and in what form to prepare ripe plums.