By Heather Nicholds
Preserving fresh fruit is a great way to enjoy the nutrients and flavor for your healthy eating plan through the fall and winter.
Of course, just eating the fruit fresh is perfect, but sometimes there’s more than anyone can handle since it all comes ripe at one time.
I can eat a lot of fruit, but even I’m out of my depth at my friend’s place, where he has 3 huge fig trees and 3 big plum trees.
Some of his neighbors have apple and pear trees, too, but they’re not quite ripe yet.
One of the great things about getting fruit that’s been left on the tree until its fully ripe is that it has tons of nutrients.
There will always be some nutrient loss when you keep fruits and veggies for a while, but I think there’s a huge amount of nutritional value in preserving fresh fruit that’s properly ripened as opposed to buying fresh fruit that’s been imported out of season.
I haven’t seen any studies on the difference, but there’s also a lot more flavor in the fresh stuff.
And there are so many types of fruit that are awesome to preserve.
So we get creative with lots of different ways of preserving fresh fruit in all its yummy goodness…
{jumi [files/includes/youtube.php] [6B3x1Zwt1fg]}
Ways Of Preserving Fresh Fruit
1. Canning
Sometimes fruits are best when they’re cooked into a jam and put into jars.
It takes a bit of work, but then the fruit can be kept wherever you have space. Fruits will lose some nutrients in cooking them, but if you use the liquid in your jam you’ll keep most.
We call our version plum compote, because we just boil big chunks of plum with a little bit of water. We don’t puree it, or use any sugar, so it’s not very jam-like.
Lots of fruits have natural pectin, so if you boil them long enough they’ll gel and get thick like jam or jelly.
Some other things I’ve canned have been applesauce, dill pickles, cherry compote and blueberry jam.
2. Freezing
This is my method of choice for preserving fresh fruit. It’s the easiest, but it also takes up space and sometimes fruit gets freezer burn.
Berries are the simplest, because you just wash them, dry them, and then lay them out in a single layer to freeze. Then you can transfer them to freezer bags or other containers.
Other fruits freeze well, although some of them should be lightly cooked before they go in the freezer.
I’ve frozen all kinds of berries, bananas, mango, grapes, and some lightly cooked apple slices and plums.
3. Dehydrating
Dehydrating takes a long time, and evaporates water from your fruit, but is a great way to shrink the storage space you need for it, and makes a fantastic to-go snack.
They also make really nice gifts, because not many people dehydrate their own fruit.
You can dehydrate fruit that’s cut into chunks, or puree some fruit and spread it onto a tray for dehydrating.
Let’s call that fruit chews, because the other names I know are either trademarked or sound really unappetizing…
I’ve dehydrated apples and plums (prunes), and eaten dehydrated cherries, figs, blueberries, mango and apricots. All yummy 🙂
4. Baking
It’s not really preserving fruit, but it does get some of the fruit in a different form than just eating it. If you have a ton of one type of fruit, you might want some variety…
You can make muffins, loaves and cookies with pureed fruits and then give them to appreciative friends or freeze them.
We always make a huge batch of mixed fruit crumble, with all the miscellaneous fruit left from the previous year that hasn’t been eaten yet.
Do you get into preserving fresh fruit? Let me know what your favorites are below.
