After a long hiatus, I put our L’Equip dehydrator back in service. I selected the larger fruits from our harvest, one at a time. I cut out the calyx with a pairing knife and then “squared off” the sides with a butcher knife. The latter was necessary because fruit slices with skin on one side don’t turn out well in dehydration. I saved the sliced-off sides for inclusion in some preserves.
From each fruit I cut slices about 3/16" thick - in other words, slightly less than 1/4" by visual estimate. 14 of the large fruits was sufficient to fill the 6 dehydrator trays with 16 slices each.
The initial dehydration temperature was about 135°F. I ran this for 4 hours, then rotated the stack per instructions, and then another 2 hours. At this point they were about half done. I reset the temperature to 100°F to run overnight. After 9 hours they appeared done.
The results are not uniform in dryness so I’ll end up sorting them before storage. The flavor is excellent: concentrated Jiro persimmon.
14 large persimmons (9 lbs) reduced to 1/2 gallon of dried slices (1 1/4 lbs)
