The Great Blueberry Debate

Onn my Facebook group, Dehydrating Way Beyond Jerky, the question of how to prep blueberries often comes up.  Blueberries have a thick skin. In order for them to dry properly, most books recommend that you pierce the skin in some manner.  That enables the moisture from the inside to evaporate more quickly.

Normally, blueberries are so expensive, I rarely have enough to dehydrate. However, in our last Bountiful Basket order, we ordered a case of blueberries. We got four and a half pounds of blueberries in twelve six-ounce boxes.

I decided to answer this question of how to process blueberries once and for all.

Blueberries!

I divided them into three equal groups and decided to try three different methods:

• Do nothing, just dry them whole.
• Pierce each one with a toothpick.
• Use the hot water checking method.

Washand drain

The first two batches were washed and drained. I used my salad spinner to drain them.

Whole blueberries on a screen

Normally, I would recommend using a screen on your rack to allow for greater air flow. But since I didn’t have enough screens, I decided that each batch would get one screen and one fruit leather tray.  Fortunately, each batch only took two racks.

Toothpick Treatment

Using a toothpick, it took me ten minutes to puncture each blueberry.

Checking in Hot Water

Checking is what we call the process of breaking the skins.  I brought a large pot of water to the rolling boil, and then dropped my blueberries in it.  In roughly a minute and a half, the berries began to split.

Cold Water Bath

I removed the berries from the hot water and plunged them into cold water to stop the cooking process.

Although the actual checking time was very short, it took a while to set up the boiling water and the cooling water. 

In the end, the berries were very soft and some even mushy.  I’m thinking if I used this process again, instead of dipping my berries out of the hot water, I would pour them all into a colander to drain before plunging into the cold water.  Blueberries are quite fragile in hot water and quickly cooked beyond what I would have liked.

The End Results?

I saw no significant difference between the toothpicked blueberries and the control group (no puncture or checking)  Except that the do nothing batch took about two days longer to dry.

Control Batch - Do Nothing

Toothpick Batch

The checked berries still dried just fine, but as you can see, the juice ran out and they just weren’t up to what I thought they should be. 

Checked Batch

What to do? Decide for yourself.