The Flavorful Way To Rehydrate Dried Fruit

Stocking your pantry with dried fruit is an excellent way to keep healthy snacks on hand, especially when you've run out of the fresh stuff. Raisins, dried apricots, prunes, and other dried fruits are high in fiber and vitamins, as well as rich in flavor. This makes them a flavorful and nutritious addition to your morning cereal, pancake mix, or homemade coconut chocolate chip cookies. Of course, everyone's experienced reaching for the raisins only to find they've become hard and impossible to chew. Fortunately, this is easily remedied with a hot liquid and a little patience.

To rehydrate hard dried fruit, simply add the amount you need to a heatproof bowl and cover it with boiling hot water. The fruit should become soft and chewy again in about 10 minutes. You can then drain the water and use the fruit in any recipe you like. Chill it before adding it to cold recipes like fruit salad to ensure all the ingredients are the same temperature. For hot recipes, like fruit compote or baked goods, you can use the rehydrated fruit right away.

Even if your dried fruit feels fresh and soft, hydrating it in water can further improve its texture and elevate your favorite recipes. Duff Goldman recommends always soaking raisins for making cookies, sharing that it enhances the raisins' flavor and gives the cookies a more tender bite. Hydrated fruit also breaks down faster, decreasing the time needed to make syrups and sauces with dried fruit.

Of course, water is far from the only liquid you can use to rehydrate dried fruit. Though it gets the job done, it only enhances flavors that already exist without adding anything more. However, fruit juice and liquor offer endless possibilities for turning dried cherries, dates, and more into toothsome, indulgent treats. You can even rehydrate these fruits in savory broth to add elevated, complex flavors to meat-based dishes.

Various types of liquor are among the most popular liquids for soaking dried fruit. In fact, dried fruit rehydrated in rum is a key ingredient in traditional Jamaican black cake because it adds moisture and a deep, rich flavor to the cake after baking. The fruit soaks up the rum like a sponge, blending their sugars with acidity from the alcohol and intensifying the flavors of both. Rum or whiskey-soaked cherries and figs are a sophisticated way to elevate marinated chicken thighs or rescue an overcooked pork tenderloin, especially when blended into savory veggie or chicken stock.

If you are cooking for kids, warmed juice is a flavorful and booze-free way to rehydrate dried fruit. Cherry and orange juice are particularly tasty in fruitcake because the acids soften the cake's signature tooth-tingling sweetness. Apple juice adds a slight caramel flavor that works well with dairy-based desserts like ice cream and cheesecake. Juice-soaked fruit can also add moisture and sweetness to your morning French toast, pancakes, or waffles.