Alternatives to raisins?

I'm sure all you permies know that raisins are dried grapes, but do you actually  understand how much embodied energy is involved in getting grapes to dry? Even using cheater tricks, making my own is time and energy consuming. I've heard that commercially, they do some weird things to those grapes, at the very least, using chemistry to preserve them that some of us are sensitive to. (Sulfites)

However, my son adores Oatmeal Raisin cookies, so I'm looking for home-grown alternatives. It may not taste the same, but who knows, maybe it will taste better?

At the moment, I'm relying on an electric food dryer in my climate, but I've got my eyes on the Wheaton Lab's rocket assist solar dryer as I expect it would work well in my ecosystem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVwyahpzl08

I produce lots of apples, and making dried apples is old tech, but they just don't even remotely replace raisins.

This year, we had a great crop of Italian prune plums. The variety I have cut in half easily, and the seed pops out equally easily, so that is my current experiment. Yesterday I chopped a couple of cups into smaller bits so they'd be more "raisin sized", but the butter was frozen, so cookie baking was delayed...

So I'm wondering what other fruit is easy to grow, easy to prepare for drying, and would make a yummy substitute for raisins?

I've been using dried currants as a substitute for raisins for a while now.  One disclaimer:  I'm going on the label on the bag at the organic food store that I buy these from locally and the next time I'm in there will confirm that these are true dried black currants and not zante currants, which are actually a type of raisin.  It may be that the currants can be dried more easily than grapes and may be able to supply your needs......and hopefully acceptable to your son also.  Another sub is dried cranberry, though these likely would be just has hard to dry as grapes.

hoshigaki (dried astringent persimmon). can chunk them up into raisin size pieces once they’re dry.

not everybody thinks daily fruit massage is a remotely reasonable way to use one’s time, but I enjoy it. and the persimmons look nice hanging in strings during and after the process.

Dried mulberries! They are way tastier than raisins in my opinion. I've only eaten store-bought ones so far, since our mulberry trees will probably need a few more years at least to give enough fruit that it'd be worth drying it.

As for the actual drying, wooden frames covered in cloth and hung above a stove works wonders, though it will probably take a bit longer than with an electric dryer. And yeah, grapes are quite wet and with a quite thick skin, so it might be a bit trickier than for other things. The only time I made home-made raisins, I cut each grape in half, scooped out the seeds with a teaspoon, and dried them in the oven at 50 degrees C with the oven door slightly open. It took a while, and the result was not like the raisins you typically buy, possibly because of the interesting chemistry usage you mention. It turned out more like... actual dried fruit, if that makes sense? Very tasty, though.

Currants:
I have tried to dry currants in the past, but I don't usually get enough currants to replace what a grape vine can produce. Currants in our climate are very susceptible to some sort of bug that grows in the fruit, so we have to be careful not to plant too many. The good thing is that the seeds are very small, so removing seeds isn't needed.

Cranberry:
These need fairly special conditions to grow, and the store ones have gotten very pricy in the last few years. However, being a drier fruit to start, I expect drying them would be much quicker than grapes, and again, the small seeds don't need removing.

The commercial dried cranberries hubby bought are injected with cane sugar, but some raisins may also have either sugar injected, or are grown to maximize their sugar content.

I have made fake raisins out of baked winter squash, that's been diced small, and soaked in lemon juice and molasses. Possibly some water if you wanted. The juices might be helped to absorb by boiling gently or microwaving them.

Like everything in permaculture, It Depends!  What part does the raisin do in the cookie that makes makes it important? Is it the sweet lump, the flavor, the texture, the idea there is something in there just for a surprise in a bite? Knowing which are the important parts you are trying to replicate might help figure out what will be an adequate replacement.

tel jetson wrote:hoshigaki (dried astringent persimmon). can chunk them up into raisin size pieces once they’re dry.

not everybody thinks daily fruit massage is a remotely reasonable way to use one’s time, but I enjoy it. and the persimmons look nice hanging in strings during and after the process.

Having to cut them up to use, is totally an acceptable approach in my book. I find scissors work better than a knife for some dried fruits, and I do it with a video or music on, so it's not so much like a chore.

That said, alas, persimmon would be very marginal in my climate. I'm not sure anyone is growing them locally, so I would have to investigate that. Sometimes temperature is not the only factor.

Eino Kenttä wrote:Dried mulberries! They are way tastier than raisins in my opinion. I've only eaten store-bought ones so far, since our mulberry trees will probably need a few more years at least to give enough fruit that it'd be worth drying it.

Dried Mulberries - good idea! So far all of mine have been eaten by the birds or hand-to-mouth by humans, but increasing production is in the works, so it's good to know they can be dried. I've never seen dried mulberries in the shops, but then maybe I just haven't looked hard enough!

Pearl Sutton wrote:I have made fake raisins out of baked winter squash, that's been diced small, and soaked in lemon juice and molasses. Possibly some water if you wanted. The juices might be helped to absorb by boiling gently or microwaving them.

Winter Squash: That's another one I've never tried drying. I would look for one of the drier, sweeter squashes to try this with. Squash is hit and miss in my garden, but this would be a good use on the years when they produce well. The nice thing about dried fruit is that it easily stores well for several years in a glass jar in a cool spot.

And wrote

Like everything in permaculture, It Depends!  What part does the raisin do in the cookie that makes makes it important? Is it the sweet lump, the flavor, the texture, the idea there is something in there just for a surprise in a bite? Knowing which are the important parts you are trying to replicate might help figure out what will be an adequate replacement.

These are very good points, and I will need to ask more questions. He has expressed the opinion that he'd prefer raisins than chocolate chips, so that suggests that the chewy texture is part of the preference.

I tried drying cranberries on a screen once, not above the stove or anything, just in a place with good air circulation. They took forever to dry, like, months. The skin is very thick and impermeable. They were still good once they dried, since the skin and the internal chemistry of the berries together ensure that nothing nasty has a chance to grow in them. This was Vaccinium oxycoccos, so I'm not sure if American cranberries would work the same. Lingonberries behave similarly, but I think they dry somewhat faster. I think next time I want to dry either one, I'll make fruit leather instead.

As a side note, a traditional method to store both lingonberries and cranberries is to put them in a jar, cover with water and store in a root cellar or similar. That same combination of internal chemistry (very low pH and natural benzoates) and thick skin means that they can apparently last for a very long time stored like this.

Jay Angler wrote:
He has expressed the opinion that he'd prefer raisins than chocolate chips, so that suggests that the chewy texture is part of the preference.

You might ask him, what you think he suggests he wants may not be what he meant.
If I had answered that I preferred raisins to chocolate chips it would be because I feel chocolate chips are way overused (as is cinnamon) and if you making me something neat, I don't want it to be the same thing I can get everyplace else. But that is ME.


Incidentally, the reasons I made squash raisins were  A) To see what kind of odd things I can do with squash  B) to see if said odd things pressure canned up well. Raisins is one of the weird things I did that definitely worked. To can them make the liquid more watery and cover the squash bits. They come out like a raisin that was soaked overnight to hydrate them.  (Pressure canning is required, not water bath!!)

Jay Angler wrote:That said, alas, persimmon would be very marginal in my climate. I'm not sure anyone is growing them locally, so I would have to investigate that. Sometimes temperature is not the only factor.

I think they would probably work for you. it’s a fairly adaptable species in my experience, at least once established.

one nice thing about growing for hoshigaki is the fruit doesn’t need to ripen, which might otherwise be an issue in cool climates.

another great use for persimmons, kakishibu, also doesn’t require ripe fruit.

I don’t tolerate grapes/raisins, so I substitute it for dried sweet cranberries or dark dried cherries. Lingonberries works too.

In my arid summer, grapes turn into rasins naturally by the sun.
If your PNW climate is too wet then the next effortless drying method would be hanging them by the masonry heater - method used by millions in Central European masonry heater culture to dry mushrooms, apples, pears.

Replacement could be any other small fruit that you like but either way will need the same (or more if larger) drying effort.

My raisin subs would be (in no particular order, and all unsweetened and either home dried or purchased organic, because of my own issues with the... gicky 'stuff') cranberries, goji berries, gooseberries, chopped dates, tart cherries, chopped peaches, or chopped apricots.

Our default drying method was in the cool oven of the always-on stove with the door open overnight. (Various incarnations ran on wood, oil or elect-trickery, but as the house & water were being heated by it, marginal cost was low).

My most successful fruit until now has been Ribes: green gooseberries, or purple gooseberry-blackberry natural cross. But now climate change is giving us a good grape harvest here in central England and poorer Ribes.