Raspberries can be eaten fresh or dried through various methods such as oven or sun-drying. Before drying, the fruit must be washed, stripped of stems, and dried of all visible moisture. Dried raspberries can be used in trail mixes, cereals, and yogurt, or rehydrated for use in recipes. Fruit skin can also be made by creating a puree with water or fruit juice, sweeteners, and seasonings, and drying it in the oven.
Raspberries are a versatile fruit that can be eaten fresh and macerated for salsa and toppings or even to sweeten an otherwise savory salsa. Dried raspberries have a slightly less versatile niche, manifesting itself in trail mixes, cereals, and morning yogurt. Created by dehydrating, freeze-drying or even sun-drying fruits, these delicacies can be eaten as-is or rehydrated just before meals.
The main at-home methods of preparing dried raspberries are by slowly heating them in the oven or in the sun. Before any of these can happen, the undamaged fruit is washed, stripped of all stems, and prepared for drying. This could involve a quick blanching in boiling water, followed by immersion in ice to keep the fruit from fully cooking. Others might pretreat the fruit with a natural preservative like pectin or ascorbic acid. Before drying begins, the fruit must be dried of all visible moisture.
Sun-dried raspberries are a possibility in very hot climates. The fruit is distributed during the day under the sun on the screens, turning it halfway upside down and protecting it from the dew at night. It may take as little as two to four or more days for the raspberries to fully dry.
To avoid this lengthy process, many use an oven to prepare dried raspberries in about 10 hours. A common temperature is around 100°F (38°C), pushing the oven door open with a kitchen utensil to let the steam out of the raspberries. If the fruit is going to be eaten in the next few days or weeks, many store it in an airtight container out of direct sunlight. For long-term storage, rapid pasteurization is recommended, which can be achieved by spending a few days in the freezer to kill any remaining living organisms.
Once fully dried, the raspberries will be leathery but not hard to chew. The longer they are left to dry, the harder they become. Some eat them all by themselves, use them as one of several trail mix ingredients, or rehydrate them for reconstituted use in any number of recipes.
Another easily recognizable way to store raspberries is to make fruit skin. This type of treatment involves creating a puree of different fruits – or just raspberries – with water or fruit juice, sweeteners such as honey, sugar and vanilla, and seasonings such as cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. The mixture is then spread thinly onto a plastic wrap-lined baking sheet and left in the oven at about 140°F (60°C) for half a day. This should result in a thin, leathery sheet of dried raspberry jam.
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