How to Make Dried Strawberries Using a Dehydrator

This post may contain affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you. Click HERE to read my policies & disclaimers if you're interested. I will only link products I use and personally recommend. Thank you for your support, friends!

Dehydrating strawberries is a super easy and great way to preserve an overabundance of fresh strawberries to enjoy in the winter months. Last year, I dried 8 pounds of diced strawberries and they all fit into a quart jar plus a little bit in a mylar bag! Obviously, a freeze dryer would give you a completely different product and texture and would store a lot longer (freeze-dried strawberries are the bees knees) buttttt $$$ and I will very likely never have one.  

I see the novelty and the usefulness of them, but I would never make it my main line of food preservation.  Something that solely relies on electricity to run is not a good use of my money in my opinion, but if your budget allows, absolutely go for it!  Just be sure and learn other methods of food preservation, too.  I can imagine eating MREs and all freeze dried food would get a bit old, although give me all the strawberries, those I’m not getting sick of.  At least with dehydrating, you can use the sun or be super extra redneck and use a broke down car and slap the food in there with the windows cracked and covered in bug netting! 

Dehydrated strawberries rehydrate beautifully for strawberry bread, muffins, or tossed into sun tea, lemonade, or muddled with fresh mint for a mojito (my fav!). When rehydrating for baking, I will use the juice/syrup I save back when I strain my home canned fruit (blackberry is amazing) or leftover sweet whey from cheesemaking for a nice probiotic punch to the gut. Be creative!  We also eat them straight from the jar for a delicious snack or buzz it into strawberry powder to flavor cakes, donuts, or homemade yogurt.  They are a fan favorite over here especially when I open a jar of strawberry chips.  My kids can demolish a quart a little quicker than I’d prefer.

Dehydrating is my main preservation method for strawberries.  I don’t can them other than for pie filling and frozen strawberries are AWFUL in my opinion.  They’re so mushy and flavorless after you freeze them; I can’t stand them.  I don’t know how people freeze a bunch of fruit and then make jam later on.  SAD SAD STUFF.  Bleh.  During the peak of strawberry season, dehydrating allows me to preserve a whole bunch of berries the best way and pretty quickly, really.  Well, at least the strawberries that I don’t have room for in my ice cream maker and our bellies!

Picking out the Best Dehydrator

I did a lot of research on dehydrators before I purchased one.  I wanted the most economical and user friendly one that is efficient and works well for many applications.  I also wanted it to be light weight enough for me to carry and move around as needed if I was drying outside or in the basement.  I wanted to be able to pick it up and not throw my back out doing so.  I landed on searching for one with 8+ trays and a fan in the back instead of on the bottom.  

The cheaper dehydrators that have stacking trays you place on top of the fan and then have to rotate seem to take forever to dry anything.  The dehydrators with the fan in the back not only can usually hold more trays, but they dehydrate more evenly due to better air circulation and you can set and forget and it’ll beep when it’s done.  

Be sure and read reviews and talk with others to find something you’re going to like and be successful with.  I will link my exact model I have had for over 5 years in the equipment section of this post below for you to check out.  It comes with a high recommendation from me!  You can absolutely snag a stacking bottom fan dehydrator at a garage sale and do perfectly fine with it!  Learning to dehydrate and also cook and use dehydrated foods is a great skill to possess.  

The dehydration process is a simple one: it reduces moisture from food using low heat and air movement to extend shelf life and prevent spoilage of food.  This method of preserving was rather common prior to refrigeration.  If you weren’t going to eat it right away, you dried it.

Equipment You Will Need:

• dehydrator with trays
• tray liner
• sharp knife
• glass jars
• mason jar vacuum sealer
• mylar bag
• oxygen absorber

Ingredients:

• ripe strawberries

Step 1: Prep your Strawberries

Wash strawberries in cold water, allow to drain.

Slice off tops of the berries using a paring knife or a fancy strawberry huller.  Give those tops to your chickens or infuse some vinegar because nobody likes food waste!

Slice, dice, karate chop into whatever shape pleases you. Keep in mind, the thicker and larger size of the berry pieces, the longer they take!  My preferred dehydrated strawberries shapes are slices, halves, and dices.  Strawberry halves take the longest.

Step 2: Load your Dehydrator

Place strawberry slices onto dehydrator trays lined with nonstick liners or parchment paper in a single layer.

Set your dehydrator at 130-135 degrees F and dry strawberries for 10-16 hours. Dehydrated fruit should be pliable but have no evidence of any remaining moisture when you squeeze or bend them.  Drying time with vary depending on the fruit size, shape, and type of dehydrator.

Step 3: Storage

Once the dehydrator is done, I let the dried fruit come back to room temperature just to prevent any condensation from forming in the storage jars or mylar bags.  It probably won’t if they’re dry, but it makes me feel better, so that’s what I do.

Store in an airtight container, vacuum sealed in jars, or in mylar bags with an oxygen absorber. For best results, I vacuum seal dehydrated berries in jars when I plan to use them within the next 6-12 months.  If I want to store them more long-term storage, we’re talking a few years, I will place them in mylar bags with properly sized oxygen absorbers.  Mylar bags block out sun, are waterproof, and can seal airtight, so when used in conjunction with the proper amount of oxygen absorbers, they can create an environment that helps food store longer.  There is no hard and fast rule for how you do it, this just works for me!  

Store jars of dehydrated strawberries in a cool dark place away from direct sunlight and extreme temperatures.  Mylar bags are the same, but since the mylar can be chewed through by the free-loading house mouse, I store the mylar bags in labeled totes and metal trash cans in groups of like ingredients.  If you don’t think you have mice, they will find you once you start storing things in mylar.  Always store food like you are infested with mice!! LOL

If you don’t own a dehydrator, you can make oven-dried strawberries as long as the lowest temperature of your oven goes at or below 170 degrees F to dry.  Layer your strawberry pieces on a parchment lined baking sheet, and place in the oven.  I would leave the door cracked so they don’t end up baking instead of drying… there is a difference and they can burn.  Let them dry just as you would if you had a dehydrated but dry time will vary.  

Happy Dehydrating!