How to Dry Cherries at Home? A Few Easy Tips

Everyone wants to be healthy. There is no single person in this world who wants to suffer from poor health and failing bodily functions. Today, there is a fruit that has been gaining popularity as a good solution to different health issues: the cherry. Despite its tiny size, the cherry contains different health wonders that are yet to be realized by ongoing researches and studies. Some of the known and medically-recognized health benefits of eating cherries include gout and arthritis relief and improvement in conditions like heart diseases, diabetes, insomnia, among others. Several cherry products may be seen in different stores nowadays such as cherry juice concentrates, dried cherries, cherry candies, cherry cakes and cherry cocktails.

Unfortunately, cherries’ freshness easily deteriorates. Since the cherry fruit is rich in water, the possibility of its rotting is bigger as compared to other fruits with less water content. And once a cherry fruit rots, all the positive health effects that it contains rot with it as well.

Good thing, people devised ways of preserving fruits hundreds of years ago. From simple methods of salting to complicated means of dehydration, we are now gifted with the skill and technology to preserve fruits and other foods, and all the goodness that comes along with them. For cherries, perhaps the best method of preservation is drying.

Drying as a method of food preservation is a process of removing water from food; thus inhibiting the growth of microorganisms. Since ancient times, early civilizations have already been practicing drying. There are actually different methods to dry food: air drying, sun drying, smoking, wind-drying and freeze-drying. The question is: which among these may be used for cherries?

Actually, you can try any of these methods. All of them are proven to be effective in preserving fruits. However, if you are planning to dry in the premises of your home, it is very unlikely for you to dry cherries using wind-drying and freeze-drying since they require expensive machineries and gadgets that are usually used in big manufacturing companies of dried cherries.

The truth of the matter is, making dried cherries at home is not a difficult task. If you are wondering how to dry cherries without a dehydrator, you need not to bother anymore. There are several ways of drying your cherries without needing specialized mechanisms and expensive gadgets. Aside from saving money (commercial dried cherries are usually sold at expensive prices), you may also get to know what went in the process without worrying about added sugars and preservatives.

The first step in making dried cherries is selection. It is very important that you choose ripe cherries that are still in good condition. Do not choose cherries that have blemishes like cuts, dents, bruises, or any other sign of physical damage. Wash these cherries thoroughly in clear, running water. Remove the stems and cut each fruit in half to remove the pits. You can also buy a cherry pitter to make things a lot easier for you. One pitter usually costs around $4.

The next step is to lay the cherries on baking trays. Make sure that the cut sides are facing upward. Drying cherries may be done inside or outside the house, depending on the weather of course. To dry cherries outside the house, put the trays under the sun for several days until the cherries develop wrinkles and run out of moisture. Turn each cherry on every day to evenly dry both sides. When you bring them in, heat them in the oven for half an hour under 160 degrees to kill bugs that might have already penetrated the fruits while they are being dried.

Procedures in indoor cherry drying teach us how to dry cherries in the oven. In this method, all you need to do is heat the cherries (cut side up) in the oven under 165 degrees. After three hours, drop the temperature to 135 degrees and continue for about 20 hours.

Before serving, check the cherries. Dried cherries are ready for consumption when they are already firm but still malleable. They should also have a wrinkled surface and a sticky texture.