Dehydrated Cherries

link to guide

Snack July 8, 2023

Note: Also dehydrated at the same time as blueberries. I tried following directions from someone who knew what they were doing better than I do, and it was mostly worth it. Not sure I agree that you HAVE to pit your cherries first.

Ingredients:

1 pint Cherries

Directions:

Wash the cherries, remove any stems, and pat dry

[I don't have a cherry pitter, so I pitted by hand. Below felt like the most efficient way to pit them and also allow me to try them halved and quartered.]

With a paring knife, cut along the circumference of all the cherries, gently twisting each to separate the halves

Place the half without the pit on a dehydrator rack skin side down in a single layer, making sure they do not touch, set the half with the pit aside for now

Cut the halves with the pit in half (so quartered), making it easier to remove the stone

[Set the stones aside in a small cup if you want to make something with them!]

Place the quarters on a dehydrator rack skin side down in a single layer, making sure they do not touch

[Every blog I looked at said to remove the pit before dehydrating, but didn't say why other than a vague "it affects the taste". So I put 5 whole cherries in my dehydrator, and also 5 that I cut along half of the circumference (to expose the inside to more drying).]

Turn on the dehydrator (mine is only "on" or "off", no temperature control)

After about 14 hours in the dehydrator and allowed to cool:

Thoughts: Most of the quarters seemed done, just based off of looks

After about 24 hours in the dehydrator and allowed to cool:

Thoughts: The halves were mostly done. I Gently squeezed the cherries between my pointer finger and thumb to see if they were still squishy, and therefore still had too much moisture. If they kind of felt like store bought raisins, I took them out. Whole cherries were not fully dry.

Final Notes:

Both the quarters and halves came out great. I will probably do both again just because of my pitting method. Unless I get a pitter or have a reason to want smaller or larger cherries.

Leaving the pit in did affect the taste, but not in a bad way! The whole cherries with the seeds had a deeper, kind of raisiny flavor than the halves, which were brighter/more tart.

Pitting the partially dried whole cherries was pretty easy to do with just my hands. The flesh of the cut ones had kind of dried to the stone around the cut, which made it a little difficult. But the uncut ones I was able to kind of pop the stone out of where the stem was by pushing from the other side.

So uncut, partially dried, whole cherries would probably be great in a baked good!

Quartered, halved and whole cherries (you can see the cut on some whole cherries). And a use for the stones!

Dried cherries, clockwise from top left: whole with a cut, whole, quartered, and halved