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Have you ever had dehydrated apples? Apple slices? If not, you must! The kids and I cannot get enough of a good ole dried apple slice. They’re just the perfect snack. Between the concentrated sweet apple flavor with some cinnamon and the chewy texture, it hits all the cravings we have in one fell swoop. Dehydrating apples is so simple, too! Just slice thin, toss in cinnamon, lemon juice, and coconut sugar, and then layer them in the dehydrator until they’re dry. Easy peasy! Simple ingredients you know and can pronounce, meaning snack time you don’t have to worry about! The cinnamon and coconut sugar together give them such a caramel-y delectable flavor and it’s a great way to make a healthy snack for your family and preserve some apples that may have otherwise gone to waste!

In This Post You'll Find...

I Don’t Own a Dehydrator

Well, you should. Yes, you can use your oven to dehydrate some things, but the energy consumption has to be wild to run an oven for 8 hours with the door propped open. Not to mention your house will heat up while doing it! I know things are tight right now for most people, but think of it as an investment to preserve food.

I purchased mine 6 years ago and it’s paid for itself 10 times over. Right now it seems there’s a craze to own a freeze dryer, and while they’re awesome, the price ticket just isn’t something I can swing right now. I prefer to learn preserving techniques and skills that can be done without electricity if need be. Freeze drying ain’t that and I’m not sure I would enjoy subsisting entirely on freeze-dried food. A dehydrator is dependent on electricity, but you can take those skills and use them to dry using the sun, directly or indirectly like on the dashboard of your car! Redneck ingenuity I say.

I own a Magic Mill brand dehydrator and I am absolutely thrilled with how it has worked for me. I use it almost weekly to preserve or make something it seems like. I have a 10 tray and it is big enough to hold a good amount of food but also lightweight enough that I can carry it out to run on my porch if it’s hot outside or if I’m drying something stinky, like meat, onions, and garlic. My front porch has a dehydrator sitting on it almost all summer! LOL

If you’re in the market for a dehydrator, look for one with a fan in the back not the bottom. Back fan dehydrators dry more evenly and don’t require much hands on work. The bottom fan style needs you to rotate trays during the process to dry the food evenly. It’s not an issue and it’s really about whatever you can get your hands on with your budget, but that’s my recommendation.

Storing Dehydrated Foods

This is not a hard a fast rule that I’m going to share on how I store my dehydrated foods, but more so the routine and rule I follow to best store my food for me and my family for ease of use, shelf stability, and best use of resources. If I want to store something longer than 1 year, I put it in mylar with oxygen absorbers. If I plan to use something within 6 months to 1 year, I will vacuum seal it in a mason jar.

Examples:

Dehydrated Apple Slices: we eat these pretty quickly and I normally make a big batch of them when I find discounted apples that maybe are slightly bruised or misshapen. Once they’re dry, I pack them into quart canning jars and vacuum seal them with an old canning lid. These will be consumed within 6 months…. more like a month if I don’t pace us!
Dehydrated Broccoli Florets: I dehydrate broccoli florets to use in broccoli cheese soup because I don’t like using frozen broccoli in it. That’s all. I store these in a mason jar because I will use them within 1 year but if I have an abundance, such as my garden did amazing or I found a steal of a deal, I would dehydrate and mylar them to extend shelf life to 5-10 years, even though I’d probably use them up much sooner than that.
Dehydrated Potato Slices: Once my potatoes start going soft in storage from last years garden, I slice, shred, and dice them up and dehydrate them (how to here) once my canning shelves are full. I don’t want to tie up 200+ jars with potatoes when you can dehydrate 15 pounds and put them into a gallon mylar bag. So, I choose to mylar the potatoes so they’ll keep for 5-10 years with oxygen absorbers to save for when I have a bad potato year or even for soups/casseroles/etc that need natural thickening. Dehydrated potatoes work amazing to thicken things naturally without the use of flour, cornstarch, or tapioca starch.

My Favorite Apple Varieties To Dehydrate

Honey Crisp
Ever Crisp
Pink Lady
Fuji

Now, let’s get started dehydrating some apple slices!

Equipment You Might Want:

Food Dehydrator
Silicone dehydrator tray liners (mesh mats)
Large Mixing Bowl
Mason Jars
Mason jar vacuum sealer
Old canning lid

Ingredients:

7 pounds fresh apples
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Tbs ground cinnamon
1/4 cup coconut sugar (optional)

Step 1: Prep Apples

Wash whole apples in cold water. This particular day I got 5 pound bags of pink lady apples for $2 each, so I definitely got 15 bags! LOL Go big or go home.

Core, peel if you want, and thinly slice apples into chips, apple rings, or apple slices. Aim for 1/8 inch roundabouts, but any thickness works it just affects how long it takes to dehydrate them. I leave the apple’s skin on cause I like it and it contains all the goodness!

As you slice the apples, add them to a large mixing bowl and toss them in lemon juice to prevent browning. I honestly sometimes forget to do this and it doesn’t matter because the cinnamon and coconut sugar makes them brown and it doesn’t affect the taste.

Sprinkle over ground cinnamon and coconut sugar if you are using. Toss to combine.

Step 2: Dehydrate

To your dehydrator trays lined with a mesh tray liner or parchment paper (these help prevent sticking to the metal trays because apples will and it a PAIN to get them off after they’re dried), place the apple slices in a single layer on the tray. 5 pounds just about fills my 10 tray dehydrator.

Put trays in your dehydrator.

Set dehydrator at 135F and dry apple slices for anywhere between 6-12 hours. The time depends on the slice thickness. Start checking them at the 6 hour mark for doneness. Apple slices are done when they’re pliable but have no evidence of excess moisture.

Step 3: Storage

Allow apples to cool and then put in a mason jar, packing tightly.

Wipe rim of jar and place a used canning lid on top. Line the indention from the previous seal with the lip of this jar and then place the mason jar vacuum sealer on top and seal.

Dehydrated apple chips will store this way up to 1 year in a dark place.

If you would like longer term storage, consider mylar and oxygen absorbers. Store mylar bags inside heavy totes or metal trash cans. Old farmhouse life (we’re talking 1860s) means I have to be ahead of the free loading mice. The metal Behrens trash cans you can get at home improvement stores are an investment but they’re amazing for storing your mylar!

Notes:

If you don’t have coconut sugar, you can use brown sugar.

Be creative with the spices. I have used my apple pie spice and pumpkin pie spice blends as well and they’re delicious.

Varieties of apples vary in sweetness and need for sugar. Do NOT add any more sugar as too much sugar affects the drying process of dried apple slices.

The shape you cut the apples in depends on how you want to use them: thin slices for snacks, diced for rehydrating as applesauce, wedges for apple crisp (this shape takes like 20 hours to dry). Try them all and see what you think!

To Rehydrate:

Place homemade apple chips or slices into a bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to sit about 30 minutes to rehydrate.

Use rehydrated diced apples for apple sauce or rehydrate apple wedges in a baking dish and cover with a crumble or streusel and bake for baked apples crisp for a cozy dessert.

Expert tip: if you’re drying these to use for a crisp or cobbler later on, add the amount you need for 1 crisp to 1-2 trays in your dehydrator and then split them into mylar “packs” that you can open and rehydrate right in the bag before dumping, topping, and baking! 1 quart jar of dehydrated sliced wedges makes an 8×8 inch crisp for me and works perfectly!

Happy dehydrating

and welcome to the world of dried fruit and dehydrated food! These dehydrated cinnamon apples will be a pantry staple, I just know it, whether for snacking or for dessert! Preserve your food in multiple ways!

Easy Dehydrated Cinnamon Apple Slices Snack Recipe

Print Pin Rate

Prep Time: 20

Cook Time: 6

Total Time: 6 20

Servings: quarts

Author: Ruby – Red Feather Farm

Equipment

Ingredients

7 pounds apples
1/4 cup bottled lemon juice
1 Tbs cinnamon
1/4 cup coconut sugar

Instructions

This recipe fills all 10 trays of my magic mill dehydrator. If yours is smaller or is a stacking type of dehydrator, consider adjusting the amount.
Wash apples. Peel if desired and slice thin. Cut no more than 1/4" thick. Add apples to a large mixing bowl with the lemon juice and toss to coat every once and a while to prevent the apples from browning as you work.
Add in cinnamon and coconut sugar. Toss to coat.
Line your dehydrator tray with a silicone mesh mat (linked above) to prevent the apple slices from sticking to the metal tray. Arrange apples on lined tray in a single layer.
Add trays into the dehydrator and set at 135F and let dry for about 8 hours. After dry time, test apples and make sure they pliable but with no evidence of moisture.
Fill jars with dried apples and add a lid and vacuum seal them. Store on the shelf for upwards of 6 months to 1 year, but they won't last that long.
For longer term storage, use mylar bags and fill with apple slices and add a properly sized oxygen absorbers to the bags and seal. Dehydrated apples should store upwards of 10 years this way.

To Rehydrate

Place homemade apple chips or slices into a bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to sit about 30 minutes to rehydrate.

Notes

If you don’t have coconut sugar, you can use brown sugar.

Be creative with the spices. I have used my apple pie spice and pumpkin pie spice blends as well and they’re delicious.

Varieties of apples vary in sweetness and need for sugar. Do NOT add any more sugar as too much sugar affects the drying process of dried apple slices.