Freeze Dried Cranberries

For over a year I’ve been freeze drying everything in sight and never had a problem. The last load I did was black garlic and I never did et it to dry . . after three attempts, so I put it in bags and put it in the freezer. I tried chopping it and then drying it and it just wouldn’t work. Some foods aren’t great for freeze drying. It’s kinda weird because regular garlic worked fine. Maybe it’s the “pasty” consistency that was a problem. Whatever . . I gave up on that.

Next item to freeze dry – cranberries. Remember when we bought a ton of cranberries last year? Most of them I made into juice and relish but I still had about 20 bags in the freezer. Fruit with skin needs to have the skin pricked in order to properly freeze dry. I took the frozen bags, wrapped them in a dish towel and used a rubber mallet to crack them. I spread them out on the trays, knowing there were some that didn’t appear to be cracked but I hoped for the best. Nope! Any that weren’t cracked were sticky and damp.

I put them in the blender, in small batches and tried blending them. Those that were dry turned to powder, those that were wet turned to a sticky mush and, mixed with the powder, I had a mess. I still scraped that onto the trays.

There has to be an easier way so I decided to boil the cranberries and cook it down to the consistency of cranberry sauce.

Once they were all soft, I mashed them with a potato masher to be sure they were all cracked/split, let them cool, and poured that slushy mixture into the trays.

It’s all in the freeze dryer now so in a few days, I’ll know if this worked at all.

I’m hoping I can just crumble this into jars, then when it’s time for cranberry sauce or salsa, I can add water and continue with whatever I’m making.