Every autumn I make a big batch of fresh cranberry sauce to freeze in portions and eat for the winter. The combination of sweet and sour paired with chicken, beef, or fish is delicious, and it’s an easy topping that makes a simple dish luxurious.
Recently I dehydrated some cranberry sauce to see how well it would rehydrate for the trail… and in the process, I discovered it not only rehydrates well, it also makes fabulous fruit leather!
So here’s a two-in-one recipe for cranberry fruit leather and dehydrated backcountry cranberry sauce! It works nicely with fresh or frozen cranberries, so you can make it any time of year.
A dollop of this sauce would be tasty on a variety of camping dinners, and I suspect it would also be great for sprucing up hot gruel in the morning. I love this sauce so much, I stand in the kitchen and eat it with a spoon… and I ate so much of this batch of fruit leather, I hardly had enough left for photos. Oops.
Variations on fruit leather and sauce
Some folks like their cranberry sauce smooth (pureed) and others like it chunky. I experimented with both versions in both the sauce and the fruit leather. Below are my results (click the images to zoom):
Fresh sauce: Smooth and chunky both work well:
chunky cranberry sauce
smooth cranberry sauce
Dehydrated sauce: Smooth works best:
The smooth sauce came out great!
Here’s how it went trying rehydrated chunky sauce: I cut some chunky fruit leather into 1/4-inch squares and soaked it in hot water, and ended up with rehydrated berries and gelatinous squares of cranberry. Not recommended.
Smooth fruit leather: Works really well:
the smooth (pureed) fruit leather
smooth (pureed) fruit leather
Chunky fruit leather: Doesn’t work so well:
You can make chunky, but be forewarned, the leather dries unevenly and the whole berries don’t want to dry completely. The extra moisture will invite bacterial growth. If you decide to be a rebel and do it anyhow, store it in the fridge and eat it within a couple days of making it.
I will say however, that if you are a texture/play with your food type, this is awesome.
chunky fruit leather
I always recommend making a single batch of a new recipe before going big with it. Once you know you like this recipe, I recommend making a double or quadruple batch—save some for fresh at home (it freezes well), and use the rest for fruit leather and dehydrated sauce. This recipe is very sour. Some recipes use twice the sugar. Adjust to your preferences.
Maple Cranberry Sauce and Fruit Leather recipe
Yield:
– Fresh sauce: Roughly 1.5 cups.
– Fruit leather: One 12×12” sheet.
Ingredients
4 cups organic cranberries (fresh or frozen)
.5 cup maple syrup (This is a very sour recipe. Drying it increases the sour factor. Increase the maple to taste.)
.5 cup organic orange juice
.5 cup filtered water
Instructions
1. Place all ingredients in a sauce pan.
2. Bring to a rolling boil.
3. Reduce heat and simmer for 15-25 minutes, stirring regularly. To avoid burning, pay more attention to stirring as the sauce thickens.
4. Taste the sauce; this recipe is very sour, and when dried, that sour punch increases. Therefore, add more maple syrup as desired.
5. Remove from heat once the sauce drops off a spoon in big globs. If you are dehydrating it, the thicker it is the less time you have to dry it.
6. Let cool.
7. If you are making dried cranberry sauce: While the sauce is still fresh, decide what you want your serving size to be. Measure your volume of fresh sauce to determine how many servings it made. Once your sauce is dried, you will use this number to determine portion size for rehydration.
8. Blend the sauce to a smooth consistency in a food processor or blender (or keep it chunky for fresh cranberry sauce).
9. Prepare a dehydrator tray for sauce.
For a square dehydrator, either use a pre-made Paraflexx sheet, or a piece of parchment paper cut large enough to fold under the tray on both sides. This prevents the edges from blowing onto the sauce and sticking to it. Make sure the folded edges go to the sides, not the front and back. If you find yourself wrestling with the paper, trifold it to create creases before trying to wrap it around the tray. This makes it much easier to handle!
For a round dehydrator, use a fruit leather sheet or cut parchment paper to fit.
the paper folds under by about an inch
the folds create creases that make the paper lie flat
10. Using a flexible spatula or large spoon, spread the sauce out evenly on the tray to about 1/8” thick. Keep the sauce away from the edges of the tray (it gums up the supports where the tray sits. Make the edges a bit thicker than the rest; they will dry first, and this keeps them from becoming brittle.
11. Dry at 135° for 4 to 6 hours. Drying time will depend upon moisture level in the sauce, relative humidity, and how well your dehydrator works. If your sauce is fairly wet, you may want to flip it over halfway through.
If, near the end you notice a sheen of moisture on the underside of the leather, blot if off with a paper towel and lay the leather down with that side up.
Remove from dehydrator when the leather is only slightly tacky and lifts easily from the tray.
NOTE: If you plan to make cranberry sauce out of this leather, dry it more than you would for leather. Cranberries tend to make very plastic fruit leather (yay!), which translates to gumming up your blender or food processor (not yay).
12. Let cool completely.
Fruit leather
For leather, either cut into serving-size strips, or roll up the entire sheet tightly and cut into serving-size rolls.
Dehydrated cranberry sauce
1. Make sure your food processor or blender is bone dry from having used it earlier!
2. First do a dryness test: Tear a few 2″x 2″ pieces from the leather, and grind them in your food processor or blender. If they gum it up, the leather needs to be dried more. Once you are sure of the dryness:
3. Tear the cranberry leather into roughly 2” x 2” pieces, place in the blender or food processor, and pulverize until grainy like sand.
Storage and portion size
Dried sauce: Go back to your notes on how many servings the fresh sauce made. Measure the dried sauce and divide by that number to determine portion size.
I put it all in one jar, with a label showing the number of servings contained therein and the measurement for one serving. Each time I remove servings to bring on a trip, I change the servings # on the label. Store in a cool, dark place.
Do a test run on rehydration at home (see the last paragraph below for a starting point).
Remember to bring serving measurement and instructions on your trip.
Fruit leather: Cut into strips, or roll and cut into spiral pieces; place parchment paper between the layers; store in a sealed container in a cool dark place. Storing in the fridge gives longer shelf life.
To rehydrate the cranberry sauce in camp
Everyone has their preference for how thick their cranberry sauce is. I use a ratio of 1 part dried sauce to 2 parts boiling water. Add the water to the sauce, stir well, cover, and let sit for 5 minutes. Add more hot water for thinner sauce.
