Dehydrating Cherries
Learn how to dehydrate cherries into chewy, raisin like pieces, perfect for snacking, baking, and long term pantry storage. Fresh cherries are pitted, sliced, and dried until leathery, concentrating their natural sweetness into a versatile dried fruit for trail mix, oatmeal, and baked goods.
Ingredients
- 4 cups sweet cherries fresh
Instructions
Prepare Cherries:
- Rinse 4 cups cherries under warm running water, remove stems.
- Inspect cherries and discard any with mold, bruises, or damaged spots.
*Optional: Check The Cherries:
- Set a wide, heavy bottomed pot with 2-3" of water over medium heat and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, prepare an ice bath.
- Add cherries to the water, in 2-cup batches, and boil for 30 seconds.
- Remove and plunge into a cold water bath immediately before straining and spreading on a clean kitchen towel.
Pit And Slice:
- Once cherries are cleaned and dried, they can be pitted.
- Slice pitted cherries as desired. I like to quarter my cherries before dehydrating, but you may prefer halves.
Dehydrate Cherries:
- Spread prepared cherry pieces on dehydrator trays, it's important to keep it in a single layer to improve drying time, efficiency, and consistency.
- Dehydrate cherries at 135f until completely dry, this usually takes 14-18 hours. Test for doneness hourly starting at hour 14 by removing a few pieces and allowing them to cool to room temperature before testing them out. Properly dried cherries should be leathery, pliable, slightly sticky, and reminiscent of raisins. When cut open, they’ll be tacky but shouldn’t release moisture when squeezed.Depending on the size of the pieces, the moisture content, your dehydrator, and humidity level, they may take more or less time.
Store + Condition:
- Once the cherry pieces are completely dried, allow the racks to cool in the dehydrator for 30-45 minutes before transferring to long term storage containers. This allows the heat to dissipate and reduces the chances of condensation forming in your storage container.
- While the dried cherry pieces are in storage containers, shake the jar each day or so for the first week and observe the container for signs of moisture.
- If there are no signs of moisture, you're good to go, place them in a cool dark place for long-term storage!
- If there is evidence of moisture in the container, you must add the cherries back to the dehydrator and dry it longer. After they've been dried the second time, you'll need to go through the conditioning process again.
Notes
Expert Tips
- Think small. It's a bit more hassle when you're packaging, but storing dried cherries in smaller jars or containers is better. Because the dehydration process removes so much volume, a lot of cherries fit in one jar. Larger jars mean more opening and closing as you work through your stash, exposing your fruit to moist air that can degrade the quality.
- Buy ripe, dry ripe. Cherries don't keep ripening once they're off the tree, so the fruit you buy at the store or fruit truck is as ripe as it will ever be. Pick out the darkest, sweetest, plumpest, most fragrant cherries you can find. Any flaws going into the dehydrator just get intensified, not fixed.
- Trust your pitter. I resisted buying a single use tool for years and just pitted my cherries by hand, but my spring-loaded cherry pitter earns its shelf space every season now! If you're processing more than a couple of cups, a dedicated pitter turns a tedious task into a quick one, though the beer bottle and straw trick do work in a pinch.
