This week,I shared a fall inspired charcuterie board and in my mission to make entertaining easy at home but up your game to look like restaurant quality, dried citrus is such an easy way to make your food and cocktails look beautiful at home and once dried can be kept for a couple months.
How To Dry Citrus
Set oven to 200 degrees.
Thinly slice citrus fruits (lemon, orange, grapefruit, lime etc…) the ones above are- orange, lemon, clementine and blood orange
P.S. I did the above photo to look pretty, your citrus needs to be not touching and spaced out on cooling rack
Lightly spray oil onto a cooling rack on top of baking sheet, alternatively just use some aluminum foil.
Sprinkle some superfine sugar on top (I have also used normal sugar and even sea salt to help caramelize)
Bake for approximately 2 hours and about every half hour, flip the citrus. Everyone’s oven is different and they can burn easily. If your citrus is thicker, it takes more time to dry out.
Quickie “drying” method
You can use this method when you are looking for a fast method for looks. For example, on charcuterie boards, I use this method often, I sometimes create a charcuterie board in a scramble (I keep olives, antipasto, pickles etc in cabinet for quick, easy meal turnarounds)
Set oven to 400
Do not thinly slice here, do a thicker slice or thinner slices will burn
Lightly spray oil onto a cooling rack on top of baking sheet (or aluminum foil)
Place your baking sheet on lower oven rack
Bake for 10-12 minutes, flipping halfway through. (I also am paranoid and check about every 2-3 minutes, I am prepping the charcuterie board, so I am in kitchen already)
Turn on broiler, add some superfine sugar (or sea salt) on top of the citrus and do a fast broil- about 2 minutes- placing citrus on lower rack.
The middle will not be completely dried out, but the sides will be and the citrus still has the beautiful look of a completely dried out citrus wheel.
The blood oranges above were done with the quickie drying method and the charcuterie board below-they may not be perfect, but they still look gorgeous on your charcuterie board!
The completely dried out citrus can be used for multiple projects and recipes- a wreath, cocktails, food garnishes and so on! If you store in an air tight container and there is no moisture and they are completely dried out- they will last FORever. Well, not really but a couple months. So, if you take the time to do one large batch, you can use them for a long time.
