Dried Fruit for baking and eating by Post

At Naturally Good Food we are always looking for the healthy option. Dried fruits are some of the healthiest alternatives to refined sugar and are a great way to satisfy a craving for something sweet. Adding dried fruit to your diet is an easy and tasty way to get fibre and nutrients into a busy life. To read about organic dried fruit, click on the link.

Traditional dried fruits such as raisins, figs, dates, apricots and apples, have been a staple of Mediterranean diets for millennia.

At Naturally Good Food we also stock a large range of organic dried fruits. These tend to be slightly more expensive, but for many, the certainty gained from organic growing is a price worth paying.

For some dried fruit we just can't find an organic alternative. This section of our website therefore has the full range of dried fruits we stock, organic and non-organic. Happy eating, baking and snacking!

Guide to dried fruit

As it says on the tin - or in this case, the packet - dried fruit is fruit with the majority of the original water content removed. The water is removed either naturally, through sun-drying, or by specialized dryers or dehydrators.

Organic v non-organic dried fruit

Sometimes, it can be difficult to see the difference between organic and non-organic dried fruit. Perhaps the easiest way to understand it is to have a close look at dried apricots.

Organic

Non-Organic

Difference

The most immediate difference to the eye is the colour: the organic apricots are darker, while the non-organic are a more vibrant colour.

The prime reason for this rather striking difference is that the non-organic apricots have no added ingredients to help preserve them. In the non-organic apricots, preservation is helped by the addition of sulphur dioxide.

Dried fruit has a long tradition of use, dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia. It's prized because of its sweet taste, nutritive value and long shelf-life.

When we think of dried fruit, we think not just of snacks, but of fruit cakes and puddings. Dried fruit is a valuable addition to the store-cupboard for bakers.

Today, dried fruit consumption is widespread. Nearly half of the dried fruits sold in this country are raisins, followed by dates, prunes, figs, apricots, peaches, apples and pears. These are referred to as 'conventional' or 'traditional' dried fruits: fruits that have been dried in the sun or in heated wind-tunnel dryers. Many fruits sold commercially, such as cranberries, blueberries, cherries, strawberries and mango, are infused with a sweetener (e.g., sucrose syrup) prior to drying. Some products sold as dried fruit, such as papaya, kiwi fruit and pineapple, are really candied fruit.

Dried fruit benefits

Dried fruits retain most of the nutritional value of fresh fruits. The specific nutrient content of different dried fruits reflects their fresh counterparts and processing methods.

Brands

We stock dried fruit from numerous suppliers, allowing you to buy pack sizes from 125g to 25kg - and almost everything inbetween.

We pack our own dried fruit and have a Soil Association licence, permitting us to pack our own organic dried fruit.

In our dried fruit section you will find dried fruit from:

Infinity Foods - we stock both organic and non-organic dried fruit from this Brighton workers' co-operative.
Queenswood Natural Foods - both organic and non-organic dried fruit. Queenswood give us the opportunity to stock many lines we simply can't get from other suppliers, allowing us to offer the widest choice of wholefoods, organic brands and gluten-free speciality foods on the web.
Crazy Jack - a purely organic brand. We have worked with the Crazy Jack team for many years. The breadth of their range reflects all the years of experience they have in sourcing and encouraging the development of organic production.
Community Foods - Community Foods are the company that owns Crazy Jack. We purchase many bulk organic products from Community, who are are Britain's leading importer of organic and conventional dried fruit, nuts, seeds, pulses, grains and branded health foods.
La Bio Idea - La Bio Idea believe that 100% organic production is the natural way of farming. Their produce comes from Sicily and other Mediterranean regions, where companies still take pride in tradition and craftsmanship.
Tropical Wholefoods - the home of Fairtrade dried fruit and nuts. A brand with a real tropical taste.

If there are any dried fruits you like, but can't find on the Naturally Good Food site, let us know.

Options

At Naturally Good Food we are proud to offer as many options as we can to our customers. We are keen for you to find the product you want, hopefully at a sensible price (for both you and us)! Dried fruit is one of our largest ranges: to find the exact dried fruit you want, use our search facility.

Don't forget: our range of dried fruit runs from apples to sultanas - covering everything inbetween. It's sourced from producers all around the world, from the UK to the USA, from Sri Lanka to Columbia.

Catering sizes of dried fruit

As a web-based wholefoods business, it is critical for us to get repeat orders. We have a vested interest in providing the best of ingredients, as we want repeat business!

Our dried fruit is favoured by many food-producers as a major ingredient in their recipes. Our dried fruit, in organic and non-organic form, is currently being used as a flavouring by various artisan cheese producers, as well as by cake-makers, to produce some of the richest fruit cakes you can imagine. The key to any great dish is to have the best ingredients: at Naturally Good Food, we choose what we think are the best dried fruits, so that you can make the best finished products.

We even have companies that use our dried fruit as a base to produce botanical extracts. The uses our dried fruit can be put to are enormous - and as we sell in both large and small quantities, you can start small and get the ingredients right, before moving on to larger-scale production.

Dried fruit keeps well and travels well: it doesn't bruise. It therefore makes an ideal snack - keep it in your bag, or leave at work or in the car.

Cooking with dried fruit

If you use dried fruit in your cooking, it comes with some distinct advantages:

The high fibre content of dried fruit has water-absorbing and water-binding capabilities. It can tenderise meals.
Organic acids found in the fruit, such as sorbitol, act as humectants, providing stability for doughs and batters and controlling water activity.
Fruit sugars add sweetness and contribute to surface browning.
Fruit acids, such as malic and tartaric acid, enhance flavour. They also act as anti-microbial agents (suppressing mould and bacterial growth).
The vitamins and minerals found in dried fruit boost the nutritional value of a product. For the commercial cook, they add valuable credentials to a food label.
The phenolic compounds found in dried fruit slow down lipid oxidation in meats and add a natural caramel colour.

As Wikipedia says: 'The high drying and processing temperatures, the intrinsic low pH of the fruit, the low water activity (moisture content) and the presence of natural antimicrobial compounds in dried fruit make them a remarkably stable food. There is no known incident of a food-borne illness related to dried fruit.'