Slip-Pit Dried Apricots.....yowza!

[greygarious]

I regularly buy dried pears online and on my last order, I decided to try both the grower's dried apricot halves and the whole, pit-in dried apricots, which are said to have additional flavor from the pit. Do they ever! I'm glad I got both kinds, because the difference was so clear. The whole ones have an apricot-almond flavor....later I recalled that ages ago I'd bought a tin of amaretti cookies and, happening to look at the ingredients, was surprised that they had apricot kernels but no almonds. Looking on Wikipedia, I learned that amaretto liqueur is made with apricot kernels and/or almonds, and that both are members of the "Prunus" genus. After the drying process, the fruit does not cling to the pit, so the apricots are easy to eat. I am utterly sold on these babies!

[goodhealthgourmet]

any chance your source sells them unsulphured...?

[rabaja]

Where did you order them from?
They sound delicious!

[greygarious]

I get them - and moist, tender dried nectarines and Bartlett pears - from apricotking.com. They do have some unsulphured options, but not the slip-pit ones.

[goodhealthgourmet]

darn, i had a feeling you were going to say that - i was just looking at apricotking. but thanks for the info!

[rabaja]

Just placed my order, thank you so much!

[greygarious]

Hope you like them - upon doing a little more reading, I found out that the process involves taking the pits out part-way through drying, drying them separately, then putting them back in. Hence the "slip-pit" terminology. There are also whole dried apricots with pits that stay in the whole time. Presumably the taste is different or they wouldn't bother with the extra hassle, so keep this straight if you ever see them from a different source. I am tempted to experiment with putting a tiny drop of almond extract onto regular dried apricots and letting them sit a while. If the effect is similar, it would be a great way to tweak other kinds of dried fruit.

[BobB]

Extracts are pretty strong, I would think any hand-measurable amount would overpower an individual apricot. I'd suggest you put a drop on a paper towel, ball it up so the drop is in the middle, and let it sit in the bag with them a while.

[rabaja]

i got my first small order this week. We tried both the pit in, and the pit out Blenheims, which are both moist and delicious. Also ordered a bag of apricot kernels just to have some noyaux on hand, and some roasted pistachios to keep my fiance happy.
Thanks for mentioning this company here. We sent a gift basket to my future MIL and as she is out of state, it was a nice way to send her a little bit of California.
Btw, they included a sample of chocolate -apricots, which were more like cocoa dusted than dipped, and they were pretty good too!

[gourmetloveaffair]

That explains why cherries and almonds and apricots and almonds all taste so good together! They are all stone-fruits, I began researching after I saw this... I used to manage a Cold Stone and the most popular mix-in for Amaretto ice cream were the black cherries. It was a killer combination.
Very interesting that they are the same, in almonds the "fruit" part is just inedible, (or at least it just tastes really bad.) I will have to look into buying some of these dried apricots, (as I love them), I can't even imagine the almond taste infused inside them!

[greygarious]

I unknowingly mislead folks when I posted in August. I just re-ordered and this time the "slip-pit" apricots I received were pit-less. I remember that when I ordered the slip-pits for the first time, last summer, the bag did not say slip pit - those contained the pit, and had the wonderful almondy flavor. So they sent me the "wrong" thing - and it ws better than the ones I'd intended to order.

This time, they included a sample bag with just two dried Blenheim Apricots, with the pit still in. So THAT's what I was raving about. The real slip-pit ones are huge and moist, but not as good as the pit-in ones.