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    Home » All Recipes » Dessert and Snack » How to Dry Longan Fruit

    How to Dry Longan Fruit

    Published: Jul 18, 2020 Updated: Jul 4, 2021 by Sophie Leave a Comment

    18 shares
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    Dried Longan (long nhãn) is a tasty snack often used in sweet dessert soups as well as a herbal medicine with a relaxation effect. Learn how to dry longan fruit at home with your oven.

    a small bowl containing dried longan

    What is Longan

    Longan (nhãn in Vietnamese) is a tropical tree with edible fruit native to Vietnam. The fruit has a bark-like thin shell and a hard black seed. The flesh is juicy, sweet and succulent once the fruit is ripe.

    In Vietnam, longan fruits are harvested in summer, around July and August. My mom just sent us kilos of it (1 kilogram is a little over 2 pounds), and there’s no possible way for me to eat it all since the fruit has a very sharp sweetness. So I decided to oven-dry them, and you can watch how to do it in the video below.

    Watch How to Make Dried Longan at Home

    Dried longan is called long nhãn (meaning dragon’s eye) or nhãn nhục in Vietnamese. Traditionally, it is made by sun-drying fresh longan. In Vietnamese culture, the dried fruit is believed to have health benefits such as reducing stress and treating insomnia.

    While the fresh fruit is too sweet for my taste, the dried one has a very pleasant sweetness and fragrance as well as a deep flavor. The fresh one has a white flesh but the dried one has a beautiful dark brown color. We love to add it to many Vietnamese sweet dessert soups (such as this lotus seed sweet soup with longan) or to winter melon tea.

    Cooking Notes

    It is best to choose longan fruits with thick, firm and juicy flesh. In Vietnam, depending on the region, the fruits can have thin and watery flesh, which isn’t great for making dried longan.

    Before dehydrating longan, you will need to remove the shell and seed without tearing off the flesh too much. It’s totally possible by using a small paring knife with a sharp tip. I strongly recommend watching the video to understand how to do this.

    a plate with flesh of longan fruits

    Making dried longan isn’t a quick project so do it when you have a lot of free time. It probably takes me an hour to remove the shell and seed for 2 pounds of longan fruits. Then drying will take 3-4 hours depending on how thick the flesh is.

    Using oven is a great way to dehydrate fruits. I have a convection oven and dry the fruits with fan on at low temperature. Convection blows hot oven air around the fruits so that they can dry more quickly and evenly. If you have a conventional oven, you may need to add more cooking time and rotate the baking tray once in a while. Or you can try increasing the oven temperature slightly by 10-20°F. You can read more about how convection oven works here.

    If you like to eat dried longan and has a lot of fresh longan on hand, I hope you will try oven drying it at home. It is much better (and cleaner) than store-bought and you can assure that there is no chemical stuff added to it.

    Related Recipes

    • Lotus Seed Sweet Soup with Longan
    • Winter Melon Tea
    • Mung Bean Sweet Soup with Aloe Vera Gel

    I’d love to hear what you think about the dish, so please feel free to leave a comment and a rating if you have tried it. New recipes are added every week so let’s connect on Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest and Instagram for the latest updates. You can find my collection of Vietnamese recipes here.

    Dried longan fruits on a baking sheet just out of the oven

    How to Dry Longan Fruit

    Dried Longan (long nhãn) is a tasty snack often used in sweet dessert soups as well as a herbal medicine with a relaxation effect. Learn how to dry longan fruit at home with your oven.
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    Course: Dessert and Snack
    Cuisine: Chinese, Vietnamese
    Keyword: summer
    Prep Time: 1 hour
    Cook Time: 3 hours 30 minutes
    Total Time: 4 hours 30 minutes
    Servings: 1 cup
    Calories: 544kcal
    Author: Sophie

    Ingredients

    • 2 lbs fresh longan fruits (you can dry more or less fruits as you want)

    Instructions

    • Peel off just a bit of the shell at the top of the fruit.
    • Push the tip of the knife into the flesh where it meets the seed.
      How to Shell Longan Step 2
    • Move the knife in a circular motion to separate the flesh and the seed.
      How to Shell Longan Step 3
    • After one full circle, use the knife to push the seed out.
      How to Shell Longan Step 4
    • Peel off the remaining shell.
      How to Shell Longan Step 5
    • Preheat your oven to 215°F (or 100°C) with fan on. Arrange the flesh of longan fruits on a wired rack over a baking tray.
      longan fruit flesh on a wired rack
    • Dry them for 3-3.5 hours. The exact time depends on the thickness of the flesh. Start checking regularly after 3 hours. Remove longan from the oven once it is dry and dark brown (or even almost black) in color.
      dried longan on a wired rack
    • Store dried longan in a tight jar or sealed bag in the refrigerator.

    Notes

    The quantity of longan fruits is just a suggestion. You can dry as much as you want. It can take about an hour to remove shell and seed for 2 pounds (900 grams) of longan.
    From 2 pounds of longan, I get about 1 pound (450 grams) of the flesh only. After dehydrating, I end up with about 3.5 oz (100 grams) of dried longan, about a cup.
    You will need a small paring knife with a sharp tip to remove the shell and seed of the fruit. It is best to watch the video in the post to see how to do this.
    I use a convection oven and dehydrate the longan with the fan on. If you have a conventional oven, you may need to add more cooking time and rotate the baking tray once in a while. Or try increasing the oven temperature slightly by 10-20°F.
    Usually the darker the color, the dryer the fruit and the longer you can store them.

    Nutrition

    Calories: 544kcal | Carbohydrates: 137g | Protein: 12g | Fat: 1g | Potassium: 2413mg | Fiber: 10g | Vitamin C: 762mg | Iron: 1mg
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    Hi, I'm Sophie! Delightful Plate is where I share authentic Vietnamese recipes that have been cooked in my family for years, as well as other Asian recipes and recipes inspired by ingredients and flavors from other cuisines. Read More…

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