Lets make a festive mood with dried orange slices! They are very popular elements even for home or office interior design, because they create a cozy and warm atmosphere and spread a pleasant aroma. This citrus are rarely dried for consumption, but you can add this to tea or mulled wine later.
By the way, try to create beautiful and unique decorations for the New Year and Christmas holidays.
How Long is to Dry Oranges in Oven or Dehydrator
First, you need to choose the right fruit to keep it from darkening. Definitely, you need to revisit the fruit in the market or in the store. Unripe fruit can lose its rich orange color after the drying process, and too overripe can become dark.
Therefore, you should choose fruits that are medium in size and ripe.
Now we turn to washing, cause this is important to remove excess dirt. Cut this into slices to the desired thickness. Do not forget to remove moisture from each slice, because when drying, these pieces will boil and not dry.
There are 2 methods of drying that are popular nowadays:
- In the oven. Place the wedges on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 5 hours. The temperature should be around 50-60 degrees. You need to turn each wedge every 40 minutes. This process is quite quick and each piece will be smooth and perfectly dry while maintaining a round shape. Also, the oven gives you perfect drying so that dried up orange slices don’t wrinkle or deform;
- In the dehydrator. If you have such a device, then put the slices on the trays and set the drying mode. The temperature inside is evenly distributed so you don’t have to turn the slices every half hour. The timer can be longer than in the oven, but you can continue doing your daily activities.
Another method that can be used at home for drying with a battery. Of course, this is a long process. But you can use this if you don’t need a quick decor. Take some cardboard and place the wedges on top of it, then you need to cover it with another cardboard and place it behind the battery.
How Can I Use Orange Slices?
Try making tea or coffee and serving dried, aromatic orange peels as a treat. You can sprinkle them with powdered sugar or cinnamon.
These chips will become a very tasty treat for a cozy evening tea. Also, these slices will help to create a festive decor: add these elements to a bill, beads, cinnamon sticks, put in a vase or as decorations on a Christmas tree.
It can also be used as a spice when roasting chicken. With them you can prepare meat dishes, fruit salads, muffins, cakes, decorate ice cream or cocktails.
Dry orange slices are used as an air flavoring agent, hang them on strings in different parts of the room.
Best Christmas Decorations with Dried Oranges
The most popular decor for Christmas is 3-5 strings of dried orange chips.
You can also make decorative vases or mini aquariums and put such slices and other fragrant elements there: cinnamon sticks, star fruit, vanilla, cardamom, and so on.
Take long, thin wood sticks and string peels onto this. Place this in flower pots. This will help create a festive decor and keep cats from touching your plants.
