How to store dried fruits and berries

Drying is a good way to save on winter berries and fruits collected in the summer, without losing their valuable qualities. Dried berries and fruits you can eat, you can cook them a delicious fruit drinks, add to porridge, meat and fish dishes. But that dried they were useful, they should be stored correctly.

Storage of dried fruits

If you can provide the right storage conditions in your warehouse, the stock of dried fruits retain all their useful properties in the next 2-3 years. This requires that the humidity does not exceed 70% and the temperature was constant and did not exceed 0-10C.

During sub-campaign, and then, in winter, to process and store different kinds of fruits and berries need separately. This is because the optimal threshold value of humidity at each of the fruits and vegetables your separate storage allows to maintain it and to preserve foods without any loss of quality.

Major fruits: peaches, apricots, prunes, so they quickly dried, can be cut in half and remove seeds.

Once dried, the fruits remain sensitive to changes in humidity in the room where they are stored. It is therefore necessary to prevent this and to use as containers cookware with tight-fitting lids. In the case when stocks are high, you can use wooden boxes, but they should be covered inside wax or special wrapping paper.

Having laid fruits, tamp them well and carefully close the remaining pieces of paper. In that case, when they begin to rot or they will mold, sort through the drawer, remove spoiled pieces, dry the rest and fold again for storage, replacing the paper packaging. But the containers of food grade plastic or glass jars are preferable to cloth sacks or wooden boxes. Any exotic fruit or berry you can also save this way.

Dried fruits stored in leaking containers should be placed separately from other products because they are very well absorb any odors.

How to protect fruits from insects

Tins with lids pritertymi, will prevent the dried fruit from the raging appetite of the insects, which are also not averse to eat them in the winter. Therefore, their stocks you should not be left unattended for a long time, at least once a month the jars or containers you will need to go through and if you need a little work.

If they start to rot or deteriorate one piece of fruit or berries, he can "infect" the rest of the inhabitants of the banks. In addition, it is possible to detect animals if she'll start. In this case, the spoiled pieces must be found and thrown out, and the rest of the contents of the can send in the oven, heated to 55-60oC. Keep the dried fruit there is not necessary – is enough 20-30 minutes. Banish insects you can, putting the tray of dried fruits in the cold.