249- Raisins- Part Trois

I know you can hardly wait for each new day and the progress I am making with my raisins! Perhaps you would be as excited as I am if you ate them every single morning in your oatmeal! (Yes, that's me. I love my porridge every morning... with raisins, brown sugar and cooked in soy milk... sometimes apples thrown in for good measure!)

Several years ago I attempted raisins, but I was not too happy with the results. I think that I harvest the grapes too soon and the resultant raisins were rather tart! Yeah, what's up with that? I also read at the time that you should blanch the grapes to speed up the dehydrating time. What a hassle.

So here is the first batch of raisins... not blanched and not harvested too early... yummy.



It takes about 18-24 hours to dry a batch (apparently the blanching DID NOT speed the drying time). Batch number 2 is almost finished (I have two dehydrators and one is significantly faster than the other). I estimate I will have about 5 more batches. I'll come back and let you know the final count.

Since not all grapes are created equal some are drier than others. I've found that if I put them all into a container the moisture content evens out. The other thing I do is store the bulk of them in the freezer, filling up my canister as needed. Where that might not be technically necessary, I don't want to lose my raisins to mildew or any other ick after all the work that goes into making them.