Dried Apples
“They didn’t can [their foods] back when I was growing up, they dried everything,” Frank Norris told author Warren Moore in Mountain Voices. “Beans, corn, everything they grew they dried that couldn’t be preserved in the ground…They had dry houses just like they had smoke houses.” Some fortunate few built kilns to speed up the drying process.”
“The Cherokees and other southeastern Indians squeezed persimmons into a pulp and spread the pulp out in half-inch-deep loaves. When dried, the pulp turned into delicious candy bars, much like “peach leather,” a great deliciously chewy candy perfected by mountain pioneers. The Cherokees also sun-dried grapes, wild plums, and berries. They had and even quicker “outdoor kiln” drying method—hurdles, horizontal frames—which they erected with hickory saplings, and on which they spread their fruits. Underneath, fires were built to quick-dry the fruit.”
—”Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, and Scuppernong Wine” by Joseph E. Dabney
I’ve dried apples for many years. I love the rich flavor drying gives the apple slices. I love to eat them out of hand and make sweets with them. In the last several years I’ve started drying other things like tomatoes, beans, squash, okra, and peppers.
Unlike the methods mentioned in the excerpts, I have it easier because I use a dehydrator. I am very interested in the old ways though. Last year I tried twice to dry small pumpkins I had sliced into rings. Both times my pumpkin molded before it could begin drying. After that I purchased a hanging drying rack that can be zipped up to keep bugs and varmints from getting to the drying food items, but I haven’t used it yet to see how it works.
I love to preserve food from our garden and from the bounty found around our home. Preserving by drying offers several desirable points. First the wonderful richness that develops in food that is dried. Then there is the ease—once you have the item drying you can go on to do other chores without worrying about it for several hours. Dried food is also easy to store. I’m never particularly picky about what I put my apples in and they seem to do just fine. I’ve had the same luck with tomatoes, squash, and okra that I dried in a dehydrator.
If you have experience or memories of drying food in the sunshine, like the pumpkins, please leave a comment and share your knowledge.
Last night’s video: Light Bread and Appalachian Foodways.
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Tipper, my family around the chimney rock section of Rutherford County had a fairly large apple orchard. One of the kids was driving the old school bus one day and the motor blew. The family was able to purchase the bus cheaply and hauled it up to the place. They fastened screens into the windows and created a giant dehydrator using the seats as shelf tops, the heat could be adjusted by raising or lowering a few windows. Needless to say a plenty of apples got dried in the old bus.
We dried apples when I was growing up. We would spread a bed sheet on top of the chicken coup, (it had a almost flat roof) spread out the Apple slices and cover with another sheet. We would take them in at night and put them back the next morning.
Loved those Apple jacks.
I don’t dry anything now, can and freeze everything. Got my first picking of okra today.
My aunts dried apples into the 1960s. Old screen doors were placed on sawhorses and the apples spread out across the wire. Always set up just off the back porch in the yard. Seems like this took place late summer into early fall. Pretty sure the apples came off of their trees.
I would love to get a dehydrator, but at my age it would be discarded and not useful to children and grandchildren. I have an old one from many years ago that works for now, but is not ideal. Many dried apples especially for fried apple pies (my favorite dessert). Many older generation folks did a lot of pickling and fermenting also, and I remember crocks setting all over the place. I am making pickled corn in my crock pot insert this summer. I love and miss all that good food.
Mommy used to string up hot peppers on a string like you do leatherbritches. In the Fall right before frost we would pull up the whole pepper plants, shake the dirt off their roots and hang them upside down on the porch. After they dried she would snip them up with scissors and use them in stuff like livermush and sausage.
We let some of our cornfield beans dry in the field, gather them in a sack and beat the sack with a stick to break up the hulls and free the seeds which could then be cooked as dry beans.
We also gathered lots of black walnuts. We hulled them and dried them in the sun. We have plenty for our own use and Daddy cracked the rest out to sell.
Last year I dried jalapenos in the dehydrator. I removed the seeds and ribs from them before drying them. When they were crispy dry I put them in a food processor thing and ground them to a powder. I use the powder in soups and stuff like chicken pot pies and even in gravies.
My Grandma always dried apples. I remember her putting them on a clean, white bedsheet on a long table. She was well known for her applejacks, now days called apple turnovers but hers were so thin and fried to perfection. Believe me, I ate my share of them growing up and boy do I miss them!!
My folks dried apples and peaches on the roof of a low shed or pump house. (I forget). They sun dried in a day or two, covered with a length of cheese cloth to keep the flies away. Everything was taken inside at night, of course. In more recent times I bought an electric dehydrator for drying fruit and making venison jerky. I passed it along to someone at our yard sale when we downsized and moved from my native SC to FL.
I’m getting a new dehydrator!! We’ve been careless with the old ones and nowhere can I find the top lids or the right trays. This one is going to stay inside–I Goodwilled a small rolling kitchen cart so the canner & dehydrator will stay on it in plain sight! I’m hoping to can more such as broths since I will have the canner handy. I struggle with some balance problems and was afraid to try to get it from the storage shed.
Mama dried apple slices outside on a cloth she brought in at night. Peas & butterbeans got dry on the plants & were picked. They were put in a pillowcase & whacked till they popped open. On a windy day they were poured from one container to another and the hulls blew away.
Mama made the best dried apple pies & shared them. When her life was coming to an end she often talked about the pies and how she wished she could make some again.
I’ve dehydrated Basil and peppers in my over last fall for the first time and they turned out well. It’s too hot for me to even think about doing that right now with the heat we have been experiencing last week and sadly this week they say we will be in the triple digits again with extremely high humidity. Today may be my only day to get out in my garden, so off I go to the garden. Y’all try to keep cool!
Sorry for the misspelled words in my first comment. Today’s blog got me to thinking (dangerous) about the high schools in South Carolina operating canneries during the summer. This was in the 50’s on into the 60’s . People could take their vegetables and fruit there and can it in metal cans just like we now buy in grocery stores. I remember mother and my grandparents canning peaches. The schools would also have a potato house during the winter months to store people’s sweet potatoes and keep them from freezing. Anyone remember the potato hills or banks? I think this was done by the state’s agricultural departments and the FFA classes would being charge at each schools.
Has nothing to do with today’s post but with so much concern over food safety today, why in times pasted when food would be left out on the table all afternoon during the hot summer months and just covered with a table cloth no one every got sick. Remember when fried chicken was cooked in hog lard having white specks on it when it got cold? I am talking about the old homes with no air conditioning or fans.
We used to have canneries that operated like the ones you’re describing, but I don’t think it was high schools. You could harvest your crop, say sweet corn, bring it in and have it put up in metal cans. My in laws did this every year. Maple Syrup was done this way, too. As a kid, our trees were tapped & then the sap was given to a sugar house & back it came in a metal can. I don’t know why some of this stuff has not reemerged (well I guess dwindling interest, & heavy cost to operate), but it sure would be nice. I even wish I had a communal canning kitchen where I live, like they did in the 30s & 40s. I think we are going to have to get back to this. As far as food safety – I think people are getting sick from food long before its been cooked. Most food borne illnesses are in food you would not necessarily cook, like peanut butter, spinach/salad. People used to have those little domed screens you just set over the platters. I routinely leave things out, but it is all coming from my homestead & I know it was cooked properly. I think we are over worried about some things and not worried enough about others.
Patty, you and me think a lot alike. I don’t guess I made it clear about the canneries, you did all of the work, the schools only supplied the equipment (stove) and the cans that were needed. As for food safety, I think it is not the food itself, but how it is preserved or in some animals raised that is the problem. All of our animals were fed slop ( hogs table scraps until a month or two before butchering and then corn) the chickens that were to be ate were fed nothing but corn and kept in a large wire bottom coop off of the ground. We would never eat what is now referred to as a free range chicken. We called the free range chickens barn yard buzzards. All I remember being used when preserving the food would be salt, sugar, vinegar, sure jell and something else – don’t remember name to keep the fruit from turning dark and a few spices and pickling lime. I couldn’t agree more with your last sentence, good old common sense is now in short supply.
I’ve mentioned my friends from Starr- near Greenville, SC that had an amazing plantation. They grew everything you can imagine and had quite extensive drying screens set up in their sprawling attic where all sorts of fruits mainly were dried. As with most attics, it should be bug free. Happy dehydrating and I’d recommend a dehydrator for drying nowadays. Oh yeah, an old timer I knew (who passed away) actually made the tastiest jerky you ever ate from dehydrating in his home oven… the way things are going, drying is an excellent choice to not lose valuable food. BTW, I got hit HARD by a deer. I never wanted to see one in a jar til now. Night one he ate my hollyhock stems and leaves. Night two he ate my cucumber leaves. Both looked like pruners sheers had whacked off my plants and to be honest I felt robbed and violated. Night three I covered everything in deer netting and I do mean everything from tomatoes to peppers to beans and corn… take that you rotten rotten deer!!! I’d like to get him into a jar if you know what I mean. Lol
Margie, I live a short distance from Starr at a small spot in the road named Princeton. It is hard to have anything now because of the deer. It now hurts me to talk about my wife but she had several accidents with deer when driving to work at 330am. According to her the deer always hit her not the other way around. I would tease her about all of those suicidal deer.
I bought one of those hanging drying racks last year. It did a good job but I don’t particularly like it because it is bulky and you have to have the right space to hang it. Mine is quite large so I suppose a smaller one would have been better. I just purchased a new electric dehydrator so will give that a workout soon and hope I like it better. I like to dry herbs to make tea. Will probably also do onions and peppers and now that I have read this post will also do apples.
Our smokehouse had a tin roof and that was where mom dried beans, apples, and cushaws. She spread them on a bedsheet or a screened rack she made. My sister and I just talked about the dried cushaw and wondered if any of the older cousins might remember how they were prepared after drying. I remember the chunks being sort of gummy and absolutely delicious. We ate the big chunks right out of our hands like we would a candy bar.
My two dehydrators got a good workout last summer. There is nothing better than dried tomatoes that were sprinkled with garlic salt. My green beans were dried the old-fashioned way. They were strung on carpet thread, covered with mesh, and hung on the enclosed porch to dry.
My mother and grandmother would dry apples each year and also make apple jelly from what they called horse apples. They were small sorta hard green apples that were no good for any thing else. They would slice them thin and lay them on pieces off roofing tin and put them out in the sun to dry. Once they were dry each oft them would store them in a clean white pillow case. They would also put small finger size sassafras twigs in the bags. This would keep bugs out of the apples. I would give a pretty penny for one of those fried apple pies they would cook from these dried apples. They would make their own dough and fry them in a cast iron griddle pan in lard made from a hog that we had raised and butchered. The homage fried pies you can buy now at jockey lots (flea markets) don’t taste like theirs did. I do not remember them drying anything other things, it would either be canned or froze. Grandmother probably did before electricity and having a freezer.
I have no personal experience with drying except in a dehydrator. I’m intrigued by comments you have gotten over time about drying fruits and/or vegetables in the smokehouse along with the meats. I can just imagine what smoked, dried tomatoes might do for a pot of chili. And I expect the smoke kept the bugs off as well.
I can recall us drying something spread on a sheet on the floor of the barn loft. I guess it was apples. Anyway, that tin roof made for a low to medium heat situation that dry things slowly. And I think I’ve posted before my Grandma dried things on the pump house or the garage roof. She put thin cloth over them to try to keep the bugs off.
I have not seen even one apple on our tree this year. Don’t know if all the bloom got killed or what. I didn’t get to.dry any apples last year either. On this little place, all my apples are in one tree or not at all.
My mother’s family in rural Cleveland TN dried their green beans strung on strings behind their wood cookstove and then stored them in cotton bags hung from the rafters. They called them “shuckey beans”.
I love reading about the old times and how people lived – your post today was really wonderful and I can’t wait to read the comments. No one I knew really dried anything except jerky in a dehydrator (delicious) and peanuts once they were pulled from the ground were spread in a place where chickens or cows couldn’t get to them then sun dried. My horse once ate a table full of peanuts that were drying and almost died. We had to walk him for hours to make sure he didn’t roll and get his intestines tangled which would kill him. Once he ‘moved’ the peanuts through and out, he was fine. That was a long night!
I dry pears from my orchard in a dehydrator. They make great snacks in the duck blind or deer stand. Also Japanese persimmons dehydrate well and are delicious—I like them dried better than fresh.
Apple rings, okra and leather breeches were the main ones my family dried. The wild scuppernongs took a very long time to dry because of their tough skins so we’d crush them into juice and save them that way. We have some scuppernong vines growing wild on our little farm. I haven’t been down the hill to check them for a couple of years because of back pain. Now that my back is fixed it’s on my list of things to do again.
My mother in law would set apple slices on piece of tin and place them in sun and sometimes in a old car that wasn’t running at the homeplace
Love drying apples in my dehydrator, great snack when nothing else will do, but I also love oranges. The rind gives the slices an added umps.
I love the old pictures of mountain folks that have the string of apples tacked to their houses. Looks like a xmas tree garland. Always wondered how they kept the critters from eating them. Maybe it was a child’s job to stand watch over it? They used kids for this kind of stuff often; my grandad’s job as a little tyke was to stand by the xmas tree with a pail of water. They had real candles & only lit them on xmas eve. He was the designated ‘fireman’, if something should go awry. I love to dry foods, too. Lots of apples, peaches, heavily salted tomatoes, and lots of fruit leathers. I have experimented with drying eggs & yogurt this year. My favorite is bbq leather. make a tomato sauce & then add in brown sugar, spices, bit of vinegar and cook down till paste – put in dehydrator. I tear of chunks of it & add it to my baked beans or pulled pork. Delicious! I like how the old timers sewed sacks to keep their stuff in and hung it on their walls – you read that a lot in Foxfire books.
My grandmother dried several things that I remember. She threaded green beans on a long string/thread with a big needle and hung them on the porch to dry in the sun. She had window screen like things that she spread things on to dry. She put them in the sun during the day and brought then in on the porch at night or when it rained. The green beans, once dried, were called leather britches. I liked leather britches.
I remember some fruit being dried in the sun, spread on screens.
Of course, corn was dried on the cob then removed and ground to make cornmeal. Cornbread and biscuits was a staple in their family diet being served with every meal.
Food was a fulltime job back then since there was no running to the grocery store!
My grandmother always dried apples and she made wonderful cakes with those apples. Like you , I love the enhanced flavor that dried apples have. I like to carry a small plastic bag of them in the pocket of my hunting coat.