Title: Dried Cranberries > Tips From Rec.food.preserving
Categories: Fruit Dehydrator Info
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"Ok what i want is cranberries dried to about raisin consistency. and I am not sure how to do it . I have a food dehydrator...."

From: egw@direct.ca (Ellen Wickberg) rec.food.preserving

We found it most successful to blanch them ( to slightly crack the skin) and then dry. But you should know that the really raisiny ones are sugar infused. Cranberries just don't have the sugar content that grapes do. Ellen

From: syoung@direct.ca rec.food.preserving

It took about ten hours to dry cranberries in the oven [at 120 F] ... they came out so beautiful and taste wonderful-- nice chewy texture.

I stopped drying them when they got to about the same dryness as a raisin, although a tiny bit drier. (If I squeeze one between my fingers I don't get any juice but they are a wee bit sticky.) Cassie

From: Lynn Eberle eberle@telis.org rec.food.preserving

I boiled the cranberries in sugar water for about 1 min to let them soak in the sugar and to pop the skins so they dry faster. After I boiled them I let them sit until they were cool and then put them on the dehydrator trays. Worked great!!!! We love them.

Hope this helps you----Lynn

FAQ Numero tres Rodger Coglan rodger@oup-usa.org C.1.3.3 [Dried Cranberries]

from Marie Martinek:

I tried drying cranberries in the Excalibur, and even with poking every single one of them with a serious hole-maker (the sticker that comes with the meat thermometer) and soaking them in a sugar solution, they still came out sour and still not dry after twice as long a time as the instructions said. I, however, tried making cranberry sauce, whirred it through a blender/food processor, and made fruit leather with it. Worked quite well. Cover your dryer frames with waxed paper and pour the goop on (making sure it is higher on the edges than in the middle), dry until it looks right (I do not have the timing instructions here), then cut it into strips, peel the paper off the fruit (works better than trying to peel fruit off paper), curl them up, and dry some more.

from Phil Rozanski:

According to Mary Bell's Complete Dehydrator Cookbook; you can dry blanched (checked) cranberries in the following manner:

In a bowl, pour boiling water over the cranberries or submerge them in a pot of boiling water with the heat turned off. Let them sit in the water until the skin pops. Do not let the berries boil or the flesh will turn mushy. Drain. 2. If desired, coat the berries with either a light corn syrup or granulated sugar. 3. Transfer the berries to a cooking sheet and place them in a freezer for 2 hours. Freezing the berries helps in breaking down the cell structure promoting faster drying. 4. Put the berries on a mesh sheet in the dehydrator and dry for 10 to 16 hours, depending on the make of the dehydrator, until chewy and with no pockets of moisture. I really recommend the book that I mentioned above. It contains recipes for anything you could ever think of dehydrating. I purchased my copy at Yonkers.

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