Dried apple slices is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store them, what to substitute, and 25 recipes to get you started.

What are dried apple slices?

Dried apple slices are fresh apples sliced thin and dehydrated until most of their water is gone. What is left is chewy and sweet, with the apple flavor concentrated by everything that evaporated.

Drying is one of the oldest ways to keep an apple harvest through winter. Old recipes call the rings schnitz, and whole regional dishes were built around the dried fruit when fresh apples were long gone.

You will find them two ways. There are leathery soft slices meant for cooking and snacking, and crisp freeze-dried or oven-crisped chips that shatter like a cracker. They behave very differently in the kitchen.

How to Use Dried Apple Slices

Eat the soft kind straight as a snack. You can also chop them into oatmeal, granola, trail mix, and muffin batter, where they soften slightly and add bursts of sweetness. They carry the fruit in Apple-Hazelnut Muffins and the chew in Oat Scones with Apple-Pear Butter.

For pies and stewed dishes you rehydrate first. Cover the slices with hot water or apple cider and let them plump for twenty to thirty minutes until pliable, then cook as you would fresh.

This is the whole idea behind Amazing Dried Apple Pie and the Pennsylvania Dutch classic Apples & Buttons (Schnitz Un Knepp), where the rehydrated fruit simmers with smoked ham and dumplings.

Simmered long and slow with sugar and spice, they melt into a thick filling or even a jelly, as in Dried Apple Jelly.

Crisp apple chips are a different animal. Keep them dry as a snack or a crunchy topping, since they turn to mush the moment they hit liquid.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Concentrated apple loves warm spice, so cinnamon and nutmeg are obvious partners, along with brown sugar, oats, walnuts, raisins, and a little citrus zest. In savory cooking they cut the richness of pork and smoky ham.

The common mistake is forgetting how much they swell. Dried slices roughly double in volume once rehydrated, so a recipe that calls for dried fruit needs far less than the same weight of fresh. Measure by what the recipe specifies, not by eye.

The second slip is not rehydrating before baking. Toss dry slices into a pie and they pull moisture from the filling and stay tough and leathery.

Soak them first unless the recipe is built around the dry fruit.

Substitutes

The closest swap is any other dried tree fruit. Dried pears behave almost identically, and dried peaches or apricots bring a similar chew with a different flavor.

Fresh apples can replace dried ones in many cooked dishes, but you will need roughly twice the weight and should cut back the liquid, since fresh fruit brings its own water. The texture comes out softer and less concentrated.

For snacking and toppings, dried apple chips swap freely with other crisp fruit chips. There is no good substitute for the leathery slices in an old schnitz recipe except dried apples themselves.

Buying and Storing

Look for them with the dried fruit, sometimes labeled apple rings or apple schnitz. The best ones are soft and pliable rather than rock hard, and ideally unsulfured if you want a natural brown color instead of a bright pale ring.

Keep them in an airtight container or zip bag in a cool, dark cupboard, where they hold for six to twelve months. Squeeze out the air, since exposure dries and stales them further.

If yours have gone overly hard, a quick soak revives them for cooking. Toss any that smell fermented or show fuzzy mold, and store opened bags tightly closed to keep them from drawing in humidity and clumping.

Quick facts

Where to find dried apple slices: Dried apple slices are usually found in the snacks section or aisle of the grocery store or supermarket.

In Chinese

干苹果片

British (UK) term

Dried apple slices

en français

tranches de pommes séchées

en español

rodajas de manzana deshidratada

Recipes using dried apple slices

There are 25 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 25 recipes