Dehydrating Blueberries

Dehydrating Blueberries

Even though I am not harvesting much at this time of year I am taking the time to deal with things like fruit that were picked and frozen until time permitted to take inventory and deal with some of the harvests. I froze 57 bags of blueberries this year from 6 bushes. Each bag contains 2 cups of fresh frozen blueberries. That is 114 cups of blueberries and after organizing the freezer found blueberries left from the spring before. First I have to take into account what I normally use the fruit for. As a general rule I add frozen blueberries occasionally to pancakes or muffins. I also have a blueberry coffeecake recipe that I make so I will leave some in there for those recipes. We also like to throw blueberries frozen into the blender with greek yogurt and protein powder for smoothies. So taking all that into account and the fact that I also had a bumper crop of blackberries and plums in the freezer as well. I pulled out a dozen bags to start with and started dehydrating them.



Dehydrating blueberries from frozen is so much easier than fresh. When they are fresh they have to be dropped in boiling water to pop that outer skin to allow the inside to dry. When frozen the skin pops on it's own in the dehydrator. Simply place them on your racks and I set my dehydrator to 135 for about 13 to 15 hours.



Once dry they resemble small blue raisins with a similar consistency. These dehydrated blueberries are then placed in mylar bags with an oxygen absorber and placed in food safe buckets with screw lids. This allows me to preserve these without tying up freezer space. We eat them out of hand like raisins or they can be used in baked goods or trail mixes.