This year I had an abundance of
elderberries on my elderberry plants and I decided to dehydrate a bunch of
them. I tested three different ways of dehydrating elderberries in the dehydrator
and today I'm going to bring you the results. It's Jodi with All About The Harvest where I teach
you how to grow, use and preserve your harvest. Today we're talking about dehydrated elderberries.
So first when you're going to be dehydrating elderberries you need to get them off of
the stems. And so I tried multiple ways of getting them off of the stems. And the first
way was just using my fingers. So taking them to get them off of the stems, just using my fingers
and then the second way I tried was by using a fork which I'll show you how to do that here.
So you can just take these off with your finger but after you do that a while your fingers will
be purple. So a really easy way is to use a fork and you just take the fork and you run it through
and they just come off. Now normally I would be doing this in a bowl but I just grabbed a
plate real quickly just to show you. So very simple you just take your fork and you run
it through and see how they just pop off. Occasionally you might have to pull some out
of the prongs of the fork but this is a real quick and simple way to do it. Also you will
have less staining on your hands. You'll still have some but less. This one was not as full
as something like this. But it also works with this as well. When I have something that's
a big one like this I usually take one little section at a time and I just work through it
like that. Again you want to do this in a bowl. And then sometimes you'll get, you know you
might just accidentally take off an entire little portion there. I just pick it up, work it through
and then keep going. So the third way to get those elderberries off of the stems is by freezing them
first. So you would freeze them on the actual stems themselves and then you take them off of
the stems. And so what I did when I tried this method is I washed them you know rinse them off
as much as I could and then I put them on a tray with the stems up and the berries down. So I just
flash froze them on a tray in my freezer for a few hours. You could put them in a container
and freeze them for longer if you needed. And then when I took them out, I didn't actually
use a fork to separate them because they were frozen. Some of them were actually frozen to the
bottom of the tray but the ones that weren't, so I just picked up that whole stem. And then I
just took my hands and just kind of ran my hands through, rubbing the berries through my hands and
they came off actually rather easily. However, my hands were really cold by the end of it that
I needed to like run them under hot water. So I actually didn't prefer that method also because
the ones that were stuck on the bottom some of them still had some of the stem portions on and
because I had rinsed them before putting them in the freezer they had water on them and water was
kind of pooled up on the bottom. So then there were like little chunks of ice and some of them
were stuck in little chunks of ice. So I actually didn't prefer that method mainly because of the
cold on my hands but then also with those ice chunks and then them sticking and not really being
able to get them off until they thawed a little bit more. So they definitely came off quicker
than just using your hands prior to freezing. But with the fork method I felt like that was
kind of the best of both options. I didn't have to worry about freezing them and my hands being
cold and the ice chunks and it was still really quick. So my method of getting the elderberries
off of the stems, preferred method for me would be the fork method. The second method
would be freezing and then taking them off and then the last method is just taking them
off with your hands because that's the longest and it's going to stain your hands the most. So
then it's time to rinse the berries so they're clean before you dehydrate them. And then you just
put them on your dehydrator trays and put them in single layers. So you don't want to have
them piled up so you want to have them in a single layer. So when I did my first batch of
elderberries, this was my first batch that I did and I dehydrated them at 135 degrees until they
were dry and crunchy. When I got done with these I was wondering if I had dehydrated them at too high
of a temperature. I have four elderberry plants and they were producing well this year. I ended
up doing a second batch and I did that batch, I did it the same way as far as you know cleaning
the elderberries and all that but I did it at 125 degrees instead of 135 degrees. And I wanted
to see if there was a big time difference or if the scent of the elderberries that
were dehydrated if they had a less of a burnt smell to them, almost like a cooked smell
to them. So I decided to try them at 125 degrees and I did that and it did indeed have a a less
pungent odor maybe? Um not that, it's not bad, it's just that the berries that I had
purchased from another retailer years ago smelled more sweet and not really having that
burnt flavor. They smelled more sweet. Now they were also smaller and you know they were European
versus I have the Adams elderberry variety. So I'm not sure if that had something to do with it. So
I decided to dehydrate them at the 125 degrees and again that did diminish the smell. As far as
temperature or as far as length of time wise I don't remember exactly. I think it probably took
a little bit longer but the the time didn't really matter to me. It was more so was I like cooking
the nutrients out? Was I dehydrating them at too much of a temperature? And so out of the two
temperatures I decided 125 degrees was better because it didn't have that more burnt or cooked
smell to it. And I felt like the color also you know I was looking at the color and I felt
like maybe the color was a little bit better dehydrated from 125 versus 135. So I just
decided to stick with the 125 degree temperature. Again though that scent I was just like okay
the scent was less but it still didn't smell like the ones that I had previously purchased
that I had just a little bit left. I did read somewhere that you could freeze the elderberries
first and then dehydrate them. So that's what I decided to do. I decided to freeze the next batch
and then dehydrate them. And what I got was, while these were these were all the same elderberries
from the same plants the same sizes originally the dehydrated version that was first frozen was
smaller. So it did end up being smaller. It also looks like it's darker than the other ones. So
maybe it didn't lose as much of that color. And if you think about when you freeze something
first those cell walls will kind of break and so I'm thinking maybe this didn't get as cooked as much inside of the berry without it,
before it broke, versus these. Um smell wise I don't think it really had much
impact on the smell. So maybe that's a temperature uh setting. Maybe I could have tried these
at a smaller temp or at a lesser temperature because I did do these at 125. Maybe I could have
tried it at maybe like 120 or 115. They were much much messier. They were much more difficult to get
off of the dehydrator trays. They, I literally had to take a scraper to scrape them off of my plastic
trays whereas with these two I didn't have to do that. I could, I basically just kind of rubbed
my hand over to get them to kind of unstick. But they didn't have like these big purple puddles
of liquid under them, the juice from the berries, as this method, the freezing them first did.
I will say though with the frozen first it did probably keep them darker because that's I mean if
you could see this does look a little bit darker than these two. And the they are smaller probably
because again the cell walls broke with freezing. But they were way messier and way more of a pain
in the butt to dehydrate or to get off versus the other two. This one also was very very messy
very very sticky. In fact these are still these are kind of tacky and more in clumps and these
are more individual berries. You can probably see and hear that. These are kind of a little
bit more stuck together. So what I learned is that I would not dehydrate, I would not
freeze them first and then dehydrate them. I felt like that was more of a mess and not
really needed. Just added another step into that process. I did freeze them individually.
So I put them on stainless steel pans and an aluminum pan and with a single layer of them
and then let them kind of flash freeze. And then I took them off. And then I put them in the
dehydrator. So that's how I froze them. I didn't freeze them in a bag in a clump.
So that is how I froze them. I do, I do freeze elderberries and that is the way I
will freeze them is by putting them in on a single sheet. Freeze them individually then take them off
and put them in a bag and freeze them that way. For indiv for for just frozen elderberries
but for dehydrating them I wouldn't choose to do that. I would actually just rather take the
fresh berries and put them on the dehydrator tray. My recommendation is that if you have a
dehydrator that has a temperature setting on it I would dehydrate them at 125 degrees. I wouldn't
start any higher than that. If however you wanted to go lower than that I would recommend starting
in five degree increments lower so maybe try 120 and then go down to 115 and I may do that in
the future. Now if you have wild elderberries wild elderberries are going to be smaller
and they will definitely dehydrate quicker. These were the Adams elderberry cultivar variety
and these berries were very large in relation to regular wild elderberries. So these were going to
take a little bit longer to dehydrate. So start out at 125 degrees and then play with that and
see if that works for you or if you wanted to go a little bit lower. You don't want to go so low that
it takes forever for them to dehydrate and then they could mold in your dehydrator or
start to go bad in the dehydrator. But you also don't want to dehydrate at too high of
a temperature so that it's, you know, cooking the fruit and taking out some of those nutrients.
So you want to preserve the nutrients of the elderberry as much as possible but you also want
to dehydrate it at a safe temperature as well. Now if your dehydrator does not have a temperature
setting on it then just go ahead and dehydrate them until they're dry. Again using the methods
that I recommended using. I would use a fork method to get them off of there. I would make sure
you're washing them. I use a strainer and then get them on those dehydrator trays. And then I
dehydrate them until they're crunchy, like they're hard. So that is what my recommendation is for
you. The amount of time will depend based on the humidity of your home, obviously the temperature
setting and the type of dehydrator that you have. It's also good to rotate your dehydrator trays
throughout the dehydrating process just to make sure that you're getting an even dehydration. So
if you have an Excalibur like me and it has a fan blowing from the back to the front. Then what
I do is I just rotate the tray so that what was in the front is now in the back. If you have a
stackable dehydrator then take the bottom ones and rotate to the top and just move them that way. You
know I would say at a minimum just rotate them at least once so that you get some even dehydrating.
If you are interested in more elderberry videos I did make a video on how to make a vegan three
ingredient elderberry tea from dried elderberries. I will link that video here. I also made
a video on how to make an elderberry syrup from elderberry juice. I will link that video
here as well and also put these videos in the description below this video and at the end of
this video. If you like more videos like this please subscribe to my channel and hit that bell
button to be notified when I post a new video each Wednesday. If you have somebody that might be
interested in this video please share this video with them. So that is my take on dehydrating
elderberries in a dehydrator. I'd definitely do it at 125 degrees. I would not freeze my
elderberries first. Again this is Jodi with All About The Harvest where I teach you how to grow,
use and preserve your harvest. I hope you learned something about dehydrating elderberries
today and I will see you next Wednesday!
