Dried Cranberries
To dehydrate cranberries they have to be cut or they will just cook and swell up before they dry. I had sliced each berry in half with a knife to fill the first 5 gallon bucket but I got smart and chopped them in a food processor for the second. The picture attached was with the berries ran through the food processor. It really sped up the process.
They can be used pretty much the same way as you would use fresh, just soak them in water first. To make cranberry sauce, just put them in a pot of boiling water with sugar and they will cook up great. They have a high pectin content and will form a thick sauce when they cool, just like a fruit jelly. They also make a good tea, just pour boiling water on some in a cup and let it sit for a while and drink hot or add ice and drink it cold - add some sugar if you like.
I add them to sweet potatoes when baking them with brown sugar(candied sweet potatoes), add them to the dish dry and they will soak up liquid as they cook. They also go good in pumpkin or sweet potato bread, add them dry and they cook up fine. If you add fresh berries to the batter they will be soft and mushy in the loaf but added dry they do well.
My daughter brought in 4 more bags of fresh cranberries yesterday that I haven't done anything with yet. I'm going to slice them and soak them in sugar before I dry them and see what they come out like. That may make a good snack item(if we're lucky), nothing like experimenting to learn something new, huh?
