Editor’s Note: Maria Lichty, creator of the Two Peas and Their Pod culinary blog, has partnered with Thermador to contribute blog posts on an ongoing basis. Lichty, based out of Salt Lake City, recently finished a complete kitchen remodel, and replaced her former appliances with Thermador.

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Dried fruit has always been one of my favorite snacks. It’s easy to pack for hikes, sack lunches or road trips. Dried fruit is also great dipped in chocolate. We used to make dried fruit at home, but we lost a few of the trays to our old food dehydrator. When I saw that our Thermador oven had a dehydrate setting, I was excited. I couldn’t wait to dry fruit right in our oven.

We decided to start with pears and apples, since they are my favorite dried fruits. We sliced pears and apples on our mandolin and dipped them in lemon ice water to keep the fruit from browning. We laid them on wire cooling racks and placed them in the oven to dry. The oven did the rest of the work. It took about 8 hours for the fruit to dry.

The dried fruit turned out perfectly. I can’t wait to dry other fruits, herbs and tomatoes. It is so nice having a food dehydrator built into our oven. I know we will be using the dehydrate setting on our Thermador oven all of the time.

Dried Pears and Apples

2 Gala apples, cored and thinly sliced
2 Bartlett pears, cored and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
8 ounces ice water

1. Turn the oven to the dehydrate setting and preheat to 150 degrees F.

2. Add the lemon juice to the ice water. Gently dip the fruit slices in the lemon ice water and place on a wire cooling rack. Once the racks are full of fruit, place them in the oven. Let the fruit dry for 8-11 hours. The thickness of the fruit will determine how long it will take to dry.

3. Remove fruit from oven and place in a sealable pastic bag or air tight container.