Prunes lying on the shelves tempting glistening glossy sides, as if calling for more to buy it and eat it. But we can not be fooled, we know what the prunes are treated to obtain such a beautiful species - this is glycerin, and sulfur compounds, and liquid smoke. It is clear that with such a serious chemical treatment, the beneficial properties of prunes are lost. Therefore, buying dried fruits, you do not need to be seduced by a beautiful view, but choose what looks natural, without excess gloss and bright color. If the fear of buying dried dried prunes is strong, then you can do it at home. How to cook natural prunes, we now and understand.
How to make prunes?
For the preparation of dried prunes you need very ripe, you can even overripe, plums. First, they are mine and, if necessary, remove the stone. You can make prunes both with a stone, and without it, but with a prune prune retains more useful properties. Next, we blanch the plums for 20-30 seconds in a soda solution at 90 ° C. Proportions for solution: 10 liters of water 100 grams of baking soda. Immediately after blanching, rinse the plums with hot water. Now you can start drying the prunes. "How can you dry it?" - you ask? Of course in the oven, only you need to carefully monitor the temperature, so that the prunes turned out delicious and useful. We divide the entire process into three stages for convenience.
Stage I. Plums we lay out on a baking sheet and we put it in the oven, heated up to 50-55 ° С. Leave to dry for 3-4 hours.
Stage II. We take the pan from the oven, mix the plums and cool it. Oven reheat to 60-70 ° C, put the cooled plums and dry 5 more hours.
Stage III. We remove the plums from the oven, mix and cool. Cooled plums are placed in the oven at a temperature of 80-90 ° C and dried 4-5 hours until completely ready. If you want to make the prunes shiny, then shortly before the end of drying, the temperature in the oven should be increased to 100-120 ° C. Then the sugar contained in the fruits will come out on the surface and the dried fruits are caramelized.
How to store prunes?
It is also important how to properly make prunes, provide him with the necessary storage conditions. It is better to do this in a cool and dry place. Prunes need to be packed on paper bags or put into wooden boxes. But you can keep prunes in closed glass jars, but for this dry fruits should be really dry, and even over-dried. Because moist plums without airing quickly mold. Also, for better preservation of prunes recommend pouring a small amount of bay leaves.
Useful properties of prunes
Well, we learned how to make prunes, but is it possible to eat a lot of it and in general is this dried fruit useful? The benefits of prunes are considerable, because it retains almost all the valuable qualities of plums. Prunes contain glucose, fructose and sucrose, approximately 9-17% of the total. Also there are organic acids: citric, malic, oxalic, salicylic. The composition of prunes include pectin, nitrogenous and tannic substances. And most importantly, what makes prunes so useful is the vitamins and minerals contained in it. From vitamins it is C, A, P, B1 and B2. And from mineral substances - a large amount of phosphorus, potassium, iron, sodium, calcium and magnesium. Due to this composition, the use of prunes is recommended for use in anemia and beriberi. Prunes are also useful for the proper functioning of the gastrointestinal tract. But it should not be abused, since prunes have a lenient effect. Therefore 5-6 berries a day will be quite enough.