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Drying Cherries? Is that a thing ?

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posted 5 years ago

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Well this year we have lots of sweet cherrys and I am wondering about drying them . Any one tried this ? Did you take the stones out ? Was it worth it ?

Lee Gee

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posted 5 years ago

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YES!

Pit them. Put them single layer in a dehydrator. Candy! Store them in an airtight container.

Pit them. Put them in your Vitamix, pour/slather it on a teflex sheet. Fruit leather. Store it in an airtight container.

Flavor some neutral spirits with them.

These methods are not drying but worth mentioning?

Pit them. Put them in a single layer in the freezer. Then store them air tight.

Ferment them. Sugar, water, whey and a little time on your counter/fridge. Yum!

Preserves, jams.

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Devin Lavign

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posted 5 years ago

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Yep people do it, and charge lot of money for them

For example $9 for this

So pull out those pits and dry as many as you can. Those cherries are better dried than doing nothing with them. Winter will be much better with some dried cherries in it.

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Jay Angler

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posted 5 years ago

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I make a lot of "cakes" based on muffin recipes (because muffin recipes generally have half the sugar of a cake recipe). Any time the recipe calls for a dried fruit I don't grow and dry myself, I substitute one I have dried. Dried cherries are awesome. I use them in Christmas baking which calls for maraschino cherries which I've never liked and are full of yucky stuff. I also put atypical dried fruit in bread recipes, so instead of raisin bread as a treat, I have dried apple bread or dried fig bread.

Unfortunately, the squirrels tend to get all my cherries.

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Morgan Lawson

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posted 5 years ago

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wow this is very interesting! I wonder if you eat them just like that after drying them or you can put them in cakes or other sweets???

Jay Angler

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Meant to mention - I got a cheap Thrift store cherry pitter which does the job if there aren't too many, but I find when home-drying things like cherries or grapes, the easiest way is to cut the fruit in half and put it skin-side-down on the trays, so if you don't have a pitter, try that.

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Joylynn Hardesty

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posted 5 years ago

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Or leave the knife in the drawer...

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S Tonin

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posted 5 years ago

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I use Bexar Prepper's method for pitting cherries:

(I use a stainless straw)

Oscar Brown

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posted 5 years ago

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I drying cherries every year, my wife uses them for baking in the winter. We are pitting cherries fast with a paper clip...

Devin Lavign

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posted 5 years ago

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S Tonin wrote:I use Bexar Prepper's method for pitting cherries:

Bexar is awesome, she has some great videos about common sense homestead things.

John F Dean

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posted 5 years ago

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Cherries were one of the first items we used on our dehydrator.

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Ken W Wilson

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posted 5 years ago

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Can you dehydrate pie cherries? They have a lot more juice.

John Weiland

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posted 4 years ago

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Will bump this thread with a question or two.

Seems to be a banner year for pie cherries. We've canned and frozen enough, but have a surplus....don't really want to run the food dehydrator just now and we aren't in a zone that naturally dries things very well due to bugs and humidity. It would be nice to take a bunch into fruit leather.....and I do have parchment paper, but is there any way to just use a stainless steel metal surface or is parchment/silicon really the main way to do this? Also, I'd like to do it in a solar over by cracking the lid to allow for moisture to escape.....hopefully okay to do it this way? Thanks!

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Jay Angler

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posted 4 years ago

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John Weiland wrote:

is there any way to just use a stainless steel metal surface or is parchment/silicon really the main way to do this?

My concern would be it sticking. One trick is to use a pan that small enough to fit in your freezer - when the metal and leather are both frozen, you may be able to twist the pan and have it pop off. I've done this with the plastic frame of my dehydrator, but not done it with metal, so you might want to do a small quantity as a test?

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John Weiland

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posted 4 years ago

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Thanks for the tip! I was also considering using just the thinnest smear of coconut oil on the pan surface, which of course is probably a bit strange and not conducive to room temp storage of the fruit leather perhaps....?? The freezing idea is a good one for sure.....will give that a try in tomorrow's heat.

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Lana Weldon

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posted 4 years ago

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There is quite a demand on dried cherries I think... I just know where to buy dried sour cherries, and they are not cheap, but really nice. I'd love to know where to buy dried sweet cherries but impossible to find around here. There is an increase in people wanting to consume dry fruits, logical because of less packaging, less processing/cooking etc.

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