2018 Success Story
6 – 7 pounds prepared fruit: washed, dried, halved and pitted
This is the amount I used to fill four trays on my food dehydrator. Weigh the trays first. Then weigh the loaded trays to find out how much the fruit weighs exactly, before drying.
I prefer moist prunes, so my goal weight was 30% of the prepared fresh fruit weight. Each batch made approximately 2 pounds of prunes.
I started the drying process at 145° for about two hours, then turned the heat down to 135° or even 130° depending on what time of day it was. The goal was to end up sometime during waking hours. The entire drying process ranged between 14 – 20 hours.
Example of how to do the math:
Start weight = Weight of trays + weight of fruit
End weight = weight of trays + (weight of fruit * .3)
During the drying time, I turned the plum halves over two or three times, and alternated the stacking of the trays as well. As the plums became close to getting done, I weighed the stack of trays with fruit to compare to my targeted end weight.
Conditioning the prunes
Once the target weight is reached, the prunes will be in varying degrees of dryness. Put them in a large covered container and turn them several times a day. I used my snap lid bread proofing buckets. The larger works for two batches of prunes; the smaller works for 1 batch. After three days, the prunes are conditioned and ready to package and freeze for storage.
I put them through a vacuum sealer, and then in the freezer. They should last many years with this treatment.
2018 – They are delicious, I packaged up 50 vacuum sealed bags with 21 prune halves in each bag (about 3.5 – 4 ounces each).
2020 – I dried to 29% instead of 30% as previously … they are good, not quite as sticky. Plums weren’t quite ripe; drying process took about 15 hours. Finished product is still good, just not quite as sweet.