Dehydrated Berries

[MotherOfGizmo]

Anyone dehydrate their own berries? I love Brie w/ Dried Cranberries and Walnuts. All the dried cranberries I find in the stores have sugar. I have a dehydrator and have been thinking about trying to dry some myself, anyone got any special tips?

[cmcole]

I've dehydrated blueberries and cranberries.
I found that it's best to chop the cranberries in half first, though. Otherwise I had these bouncy strange things.

I've done mushrooms, too, when I got them in big bags on sale.
I used to do tomatoes (like sundried tomatoes) and slices of oranges (for orange flavour in baking).

I haven't done anything in a while. I should think about it some more.

[MotherOfGizmo]

LOL bouncy huh? I think I'll take your advice! yea, I love my dehydrator, but I have mostly used it for beef jerky. I have tried oranges and tomatos though, I did the tomatos too long and they came out crispy LOL

[2big4mysize]

yep stock up on cranberries at Thanksgiving and dry them for addeing to foods like cheese and freeze then for cooking with too.

Be very picky about the berries you dehydrate so you don't get any mold containinantes on them as it can during the drying process conttaininate your whole batch.

Cutting them in half ir great or you can puree them and make leathers too.

[KimberBoh]

Good luck finding cranberries this time of year. I must have gone to about 20 different stores this Easter looking for them and nobody had them! Boy, was I upset. I thought you could basically find all kinds of fruits and veggies year round but I guess I was wrong. I would have paid anything for them, LOL! So, I did without and next fall, I'm stocking up big time. I did look at the freeze dried ones and found the same thing as you MOG, all had sugar. Good luck in your hunt!

[MotherOfGizmo]

You have a point there. I'll check at Wholefoods, but its not imperative that I have them right now anyway. I think I'm going to try to freeze dry cherries too, they would make a nice chewy snack I think?

I used to love dried apricots, I haven't even checked the carb count on those, but I'm guessing its pretty high!

Melons would not be good dried..hum, what else would be good and low carb?