Fruit
Banana
In the catalogue for dehydrating: 3mm slices, 60°C, six to eight hours.
What it does in fast-moving hot air
Banana flesh is high in sugar and low in acid and structure, which is why it browns enzymatically the moment it is cut and why dehydrated slices come out brown rather than pale. At 60°C the water leaves over hours without the sugars caramelising, leaving a chewy slice rather than a crisp one — the sugar concentration is simply too high for brittleness. Slice thickness is the whole variable, and doubling it does considerably more than doubling the time.
Why the cut matters
Banana is here as a dehydrating food. Shop-bought banana chips are deep-fried and sweetened; dehydrated banana is a different product entirely, and the published figure is what makes it possible to say so with a number attached.
Cooking pages
- Dried banana slices — Six to eight hours at 60°C for 3mm slices.
There is deliberately no cooking time on this page. A food does not have one — a cut, at a thickness, in a state, at a loading, in a particular appliance does. That is what the pages above are for.