Yesterday, Ron and I decided to do something about the 40 pounds of persimmons we harvested on Thanksgiving morning. Persimmons are not the most popular fruit and as you probably know, just about every conventional way of preserving fruit involves massive amounts of sugar, so we had very limited options.
There's 3 and 4 Fuyu persimmons to a pound, so 40 pounds x 3.5 = 140 persimmons. That's a lot of coring, peeling and chopping. But Ron made pretty quick work of the coring and peeling and I did the chopping.
Sliced persimmon is really beautiful and I tried to show it off in my Fall Fruit Salad, but I added so much other fruit it was almost buried. A pie could really show off the fruit, but that's not very Paleo. Maybe we could dry some? I did a quick check to see if that was a good idea and found this:
"The drying process sweetens Persimmons to chewy pieces of near candy…so put them in a covered candy dish and have a far more healthy nibble than any confectioner ever devised."
Now that sounds like it could be paleo approved. Well, unless you are trying to lose weight and then dried fruits are probably not a great idea, which means Ron will be eating most of these!
So I pulled out the mandoline
and we set aside the prettiest center slices for drying and used the tops and bottoms of the fruit for the chutney and sauce.
The slices went into the dehydrator
, and stayed there overnight. A few of the smaller ones got a little crunchy, but were still very edible. And on every tray, a few of them looked like they were hooking up...
We were very happy with the way they turned out, and of the three recipes we made, the dried fruit was the easiest. But it would be best to treat them as if they really were candy, because they truly are almost that sweet.
I found a couple of recipes for chutney and combined them to make my own version.
I've posted the recipe for the chutney here.
Notice I didn't say much about the sauce. It's our least favorite and we probably will not make it again. I do apologize for tricking you into reading this by calling dried fruit "candy"... but a blogger's gotta do what a blogger's gotta do. :-)
Sharing this at the Hearth and Soul Blog Hop!
The dried persimmons look so beautiful. Great pics.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great recipe! And I agree that your picture presention is gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteHey these recipes are great! I love your dried persimmons. We can get them from some Chinese stores here, but I would love to be able to make them myself--gotta get a dehydrator! Love your chutney too, sounds yum.
ReplyDeleteThey look gorgeous!! Great job!! They are so pretty you almost want to make a garland of them for the Christmas tree :D
ReplyDeleteOh, this is fantastic! You know, I've never even had a persimmon...as far as I know, they don't grow around here. I would love to try the dried version...or any, really. Thank you for sharing this w/ the hearth and soul hop this week!
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone! My sister and her picky eater grandson came by yesterday and my sister couldn't believe that I didn't add sugar, and her grandson liked them also. The best way I can describe the dried persimmon is almost like a slightly hard Starburst candy. It's probably been 20 years since I had one of those, but eating the dried fruit brought back that memory.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea Lori! If we get a bumper crop next year, I am going to keep that in mind and send a few to girlchef too. :-)
These look great, Patty. You have such a wonderful presentation.
ReplyDeleteThanks Richard!!
ReplyDeleteI love dried persimmons! I like them more than eating them fresh. I love how pretty they are when they are sliced too. Like a flower.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting! I've never thought of drying persimmon. Looks beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThanks kirbie and Alina. They do look like a flower, don't they? :-)
ReplyDeleteHow do u make this?
ReplyDeleteHi Claire, I assume you are talking about the "candy"? You just peel the persimmons, slice them, and dry them! We use a dehydrator as show above.
ReplyDelete