Food Alphabet
Prunes (dried)
Prunes are dried plums of the varieties "Hungarian Italian" (the best prunes) and "Hungarian home".
Ripe, fleshy fruits with a bone freely separating from the pulp, containing at least 10% of sugars and no more than 1.2% of acids, are suitable for drying.
The fruits of the "Hungarian Italian" are pre-blanched (treated with boiling water), then they are cooled with running water and dried in steam dryers at a temperature of 80°C (at the end of drying, the temperature is reduced to 60°C). To make the prunes shine, after cooling and sorting, they are immersed in boiling water for 1.5—2 minutes, after which they are treated with glycerin.
Good quality prunes should be black in color, soft, sweet and sour taste. Prunes, which we eat in winter and spring, contain about 50% sugar (when drying plums, sucrose practically disappears, but other carbohydrates remain-glucose and fructose).
Prunes are used for making sweets ("prunes in chocolate"), desserts, salads, meat and vegetable hot dishes, as a filling for pies and an ingredient for compote.
In addition to its positive effects on the internal organs and the human body as a whole, prunes have other unique properties. For example, few people know that prunes help to store fresh raw meat for a long time, while it protects it by 90% from the reproduction of salmonella, E. coli and Staphylococcus. And it also keeps moisture, which allows the meat to stay juicy!
