Sun Dried Mango

A colleague of mine just returned from Philippine for a short holiday back home and he brought us some dried mango as souvenirs. Well, I like the dried mango and I think it's delicious. When I was chewing the dried mango, I happened to remember that there's a mango tree near my house and the fruits were plentiful. However, most of fruits were left to rot because the mango was quite sourish. So, I thought that maybe I could make dried mango with the not so in demand mangoes.

After making up my mind, I googled around for the methods to make dried mango. Most recipes called for food dehydrator. Well, I don't have that gadget and I won't buy one just for the sake of trying, so I opted for sun dried method. Well, sun dried is one of the methods to prolong the life of food. However, compared to food dehydrator, sun dried method will take longer period and exposed to the environment (dust, and maybe a fly or two). After researching online, I gave up because it is too much work. 

My mom caught on the idea though, she plucked a few mangoes and sliced it into thin pieces and scattered it around in a big metal plate (around 30cm in diameter). We actually discussed whether to 'marinate' the mango slices in sugar first or not, after all it's very sour. Then, we decided not to coat it with sugar. So, the mango slices were dried under the sun in its raw form without any other processing step.  

During the day, my mom would dried it under the sun. During the night, the plate would be kept inside the fridge. Well, we have no idea where to store it during the night! So, we just stored it inside the fridge like any other not dried food items. Actually, the mango slices dried up pretty fast, it just took like 5 or 6 days to shrink to less than 50% of the original volume. (I imagined earlier it would take around 2 weeks!)

Well, the end result looks like the photo below, and so far I had only 1 piece and no upset stomach. So, it is safe to eat. There are two problems though, it is quite hard (unlike the dried mango from Philippine, they must have some special technique to maintain the softness of the mango) and very sour (it tastes just like the sourish fresh mango). Mmmmm, this drying method didn't tone down the level of sourness. 

Conclusion: To get sweet and delicious dried mango, the raw material should be sweet mango too! 

sun dried mango

*Now we are trying to finish up our home made sun dried mango!!!!