How to dry figs in your garden or at home
How to dry figs in your garden or at home
Fresh figs have a substantial amount of water just like other types of fruits. This freshness and water inside will help micro organics to grow really fast inside figs and cause it to rot very fast. There are several ways that helps keeping foodstuff for a long time. One of these ways is drying. In the case of figs fruit, this is the best and the cheapest way.
How to dry figs
Drying up is done in several ways. The cheapest and easiest way is drying up under the sun. Also, using a stream of warm air on it, will helps drying the figs fruit up. Also the fig itself has a tendency of drying on the tree. So if you leave it on the tree and not picking it up, it would dry up to a level and afterward will fall down under the tree. Then you can put it under the sun and let it dries up a little more. About 20% moisture is present in the figs that are dried on the tree. This amount is reduced to 5% after drying up under the sun.
Figs get dried on tree
The best Iranian fig is produced in a town named Estahban. This town is the biggest town garden in the world and registered in UNESCO too. Fig is an ancient and a really beneficial fruit. In the ancient time (history of figs) they used fig fruit as the remedy to almost all of the illnesses.
In this town(Estahban) as mentioned before, they let the figs fruit dry up on the tree and after that, they collect them from under the tree and spread on a paved place called Eshpang, locally.
Figs get dried under the sun and on the Eshpang
Process of drying up of this fruit will usually takes up to 5 days. Well of course the high sun and a mild breeze will speed up this process. After the figs were dried up, you should collect them before sun rise. Because the sun light will make them soft and prone to damage. Also the fruit may lose its shape and color, thus quality.
Note that it is better that you spread the figs on the paved area only one layer. And the paved area must be built in a location without any interruption of sun light during the day.
Drying the figs inside home
If you have enough space in your house, it is also possible to use sun light to dry figs. In the large cities that there is usually air contamination, it is useful to put a clean cloth on the fig and put it under the sun light. This will help in preventing of the figs contamination. Note that, it is the best way to let figs or Angeer dries up on the tree as long as possible.
You can also pierce each fig fruit and cross a cotton fiber through. Afterward you can hang this string in a warm place with enough amount of sun light and breeze. In the case of Turkish figs, this method is very popular.
Using oven to dry the figs
Now a days, there is oven in almost every house and house wives know pretty well how to use them to cook and different stuff as well. Remember, if the temperature of the oven is high, instead of drying the figs, you would cook them. So decrease the temp. as low as possible (40-degree C) and put the figs fruit inside the oven. Let the door open so the moisture can escape. Every hour try to rummage the figs inside your dish so that every part of the fruits receive enough heat. After 10 to 15 hours, the figs are dried. It may take a lot more than that depending on the amount of moisture inside them. Check to see if they were completely wrinkled and dry before letting them cool off.
At last, dried figs have different classes and they are sorted according to their dimension and color. The lighter the color, the higher the quality, as well as dimension. The biggest fig has the size of AAA and the smallest one is B.
