Making Raisins in a Dehydrator - is it Worth it?
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- A few weeks ago, I tried some 'candyfloss' grapes - they were nice, and soon after trying them, I wondered what it would be like to make them into raisins - so in this video, I'll try that - but also, is it worth even doing that? Let's find out!
*Afterthought & Addenda*
*Erratum* - there is a quite egregious gaffe in the cost calculation for the homemade grapes - I forgot to multiply the kwh cost by the 3.26 kwh actually used (so the electricity cost is low by a factor of 3.26) - so my cheapest homemade raisins are £19.16 per kg - in fact 9.67 times the cost of shop-bought.
*Reasons* - I suppose there are other reasons why, despite the cost, a person might still choose to do this - to be in control of additives and preservatives such as sulphites and oils, which are commonly added to dried fruits, or just to be able tmake something specific that isn't readily available to buy - such as raisins from a very specific grape variety.
And of course if you have some way to get the grapes completely for free, or very, very cheap, then the end user cost does start to compete.
how is this comment 6 days old?
@@battlefox7614 probably unlisted or scheduled video
Or just to make a very interesting UA-cam video about them
@@battlefox7614 I make videos before you see them. It pretty much has to work that way for anything that isn't a live stream
I think as a way to explore more lesser known varieties of fruit that’s not available on the market and supporting native varieties of fruit would offset a lot of shipping cost issues, and it’s a great excuse to try things out as dehydrating is quite easy for anyone to do! Or make jams, fond memories of Davidson plum jam after foraging for hours.
Ah... The corner of the internet where the question is answered in the thumbnail as well... How I've missed you💙
Storebought raisins are dried in the course of 3 -4 days, as they were drying they were also fermenting under the sunlight because of long drying time. But the raisins you have made are dried about 15 hours they didnt have the chance of fermenting and they didnt have sunlight. I think thats the reason why they are different my grandmother makes dried grapes for us for years in Turkey she always speads grapes onto a rack in an open area in her garden under the sun. Her raisins tuns out just like storebought raisins. Thank for the video by the way i really like your videos. Greetings from Istanbul
Do you watch Amoranth or Hasan more? Lol
@@mailorsoon1987 What
Explains why dehydrated raisins taste good and store-bought taste like crap. Thanks.
Thank you for the information!
@@mailorsoon1987 what does this question mean?
Thank you for raisin awareness on the subject
I hate you lmfao
I’m glad it’s all currant information
As someone who worked in the dried fruit industry here in the States we used large dryers with a higher temperature and much faster speed to make our dried fruit, so that may have something to do with the flavor differences. That and the blanching part tended to be done with sugar syrups mostly for flavor. While we ran cherries primarily where I was at, we did run currants from time to time and those turned out.... not to my taste, but that is due to regional flavors more than anything.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing that insight!
This is why I dry my own cranberries for my chinchillas. Fruit is a treat anyway, so adding unknown sugars is not to my (or their) liking. My dried fruits are NOT sticky like store-bought ones either.
I am curious, did you work at one of the bigger name dried fruit manufacturers? I worked in the same field for some time, and this video instantly caught my attention. Would be interesting to chat with someone else who worked in the industry! We did mostly cranberries, though sometimes cherries as well.
I love currants. They're so hard to get in North America. IIRC I think there was some sort of disease that spread widely, and farmers never started re-growing them much after that.
@@MsHojat yeah it was a disease that killed a specific species of pine tree IIRC and since it was heavily used in construction they needed the keep the trees safe from the disease so the US government banned currants from being grown. The ban has lifted in recent years, but the flavor is not normalized.
Your videos are lovely. I've only recently been heavily depressed but the prospect of having my own house and doing what you do as a hobby uplifts my spirits greatly. I love nature and I love cooking and making similar experiments. I don't dream of making a video series, but perhaps something like what you do. I hope you make many more videos like these, especially when winter is soon here about what there is to do in the winter that involves perhaps foraging or saving money. Thank you for these.
I couldn’t agree more, winter activities or how to save money would be brilliant topics. I hope you are closer to having your own house now and your overall well-being improved. Please look after yourself, life is very taxing, keep fighting and keep caring. Very best wishes 👍🤜🤛
My parents do make raisins in their dehydrator, but they do it with grapes from a vine on the property. It's effective that way since they get too many grapes to eat fresh anyway.
Something neat your folks may appreciate so long as they don't have an allergy;
Back in the 18th century, a method of preserving strawberries is to put them in a jar along with sugar and raisins. Basically layering them together until the jar is filled, then sealed.
The raisins not only help preserve the strawberries, but they soak up the juices and taste like strawberries at the end of it.
@@Shenorai whoa I have to try this!
Have you considered using the dehydrator to create all the components for a Christmas wreath? Dried orange slices, cloves, berries etc.
Reminds me of my aunt making Christmas wreaths not the dehydrating part lnao
Great idea!
They make raisins and currants by growing the grapes on the vine, then cutting the main stem so the grapes dehydrate in the sunshine. It’s been done for thousands of years.
I make my own raisins each year, along with my own candied peels and home rendered suet. These combine to make really tasty and unique mince pies, Christmas puddings and Christmas cake. I don't factor in the cost because I wouldn't normally buy the commercial versions.
You. Rock.
My brother in law has a bunch of vines growing up the side of the house. They are very tasty, and the amount not eaten by the kids are turned into raisins. He agrees it makes no sense (economically), but my gosh, they are tasty!
I love these obscure videos, they suit my mind. I’d say there’s a huge difference in bought raisins and their prices. You get cheap ones like you did or some triple that price which are an absolute treat. They still wouldn’t cost what it took for the hydrating.Great entertainment…please continue making these videos. Thank you.
Love this channel, can never predict what he might do next.
Never knew I needed to know if its worth making DIY raisins, but now I do, we all do.
A quick check online revealed that the most often used grape to make raisins is the Thompson, followed by the Muscat. And then they are sun dried, so that probably accounts for any lack of flavour. Definitely not to be recommended for making at home from random grapes but a really great experiment. Enjoyed it! 👍
I bought 2 packs of exactly the same candy floss grapes from Tesco and finished one off on the day i got them. They are delicious 😁
Red and black grape skins can produce quite an attractive dye with the right mordant, I’ve not tried it yet myself but a friend of mine has dyed some samples before.
Candy floss grapes maybe the best name for a fruit . So appealing
Haha never liked raisins but find myself watching anyway.
Super enjoyable videos
This is another video on a topic I didn't know I needed to know about until I watched it. Also I love videos that include Jenny! She's so polite
Excellent video. I love your thumbnails as they are never clickbait. What we see is what we get. Please never change that.
Really love the environmental calculation. Maybe you could make it a channel ‘thing’ to calculate the rough cost of each video’s experiment, and carbon offset it? Would love that.
Nooooo
Lol, fancy seeing you here
There is one-just one-way I could see this being viable. If you live in a location that has a *_lot_* of hot, dry weather.
In summer, here, we get a good few days where it will be in the low-to-mid 40s with less than 10% humidity. A box with a small solar-powered fan in it could be used to dehydrate the grapes for free. I'll have to see about trying it and documenting the process.
I prefer sultanas over raisins and raisins over currants but that's because sultanas are generally larger than raisins which are larger than currants. You could make mincemeat with them too! Now you've given me some ideas ( always a dangerous thing to do🤣🤣)
I make raisins every year from my home grapevine. I live in the Pacific Northwest US, so I use a dehydrator to make them. I grow a seedless red table grape called Canadace. Canadace is an excellent table grape, but makes an even better raisin. When I fill my dehydrator with those grapes, I end up with a half gallon canning jar of raisins, that are the best raisins I've ever tasted.
I found you experiment interesting. That you had to buy the grapes and figure that into the cost really made me appreciate having a mature grape vine.
I wonder how different between dehydrator-dried and sun-dried. I know that you have to be really lucky to have a sunshine day in the UK, so a dehydrator is probably a necessity. However, as I see from this video, this looks like putting in a tower of sieves and then heating them up indoor. I guess that some water will be trapped somewhere in the same way as a dehumidifier. Meanwhile, sun-drying is done outdoor, and therefore, there is no need for moisture to be trapped. Also, if I understand correctly, sun-drying does not only remove water but also ferment the food, which give extra layers of flavours, like shiitake mushrooms, for example.
The moisture just escapes to the environment the machine is in, there's no need for any "moisture trapping". For example, if you leave a cup of water for some time, the water level in the cup will decrease with time. Do you need any moisture trapping for that? Of course not, the moisture just escapes to the environment. Same principle applies to a dehydrator machine - it's just accelerated because of the heat and airflow that the machine provides.
@@Frexus0 Vapor pressure (of water) greater than the external environmental pressure. Nothing more, nothing less.
If u buy grapes from a grower they r much less expensive. Also grapes that are less attractive and would not b sold in a store can b used. This is a good way to use otherwise unwanted produce
Just type out the full word
@@Remigrator cuz
This answers some questions I've wondered about since making dried plums last summer.
I got the plums for free (tree in the garden), but I did dry them for a long time (20-30 hours) to get something more like raisins - as I was worried about them not keeping. From this it looks like the electricity's still only a few dollars, though CO2 is still a concern.
The bigger issue for me was labour: plums aren't seedless, and stoning a few kilos takes _hours_. It'd be more time-efficient to work minimum wage and buy prunes (or raisins).
(Seeded prunes are a thing, but I think they take even longer to dry. And for cooking you'd need to stone them anyway.)
I've made dehydrated grapes for years and here where I live we have wild grapes. Love mine over any bought ones I 'very found.
For some reason the dehydrator videos specifically are very interesting to me
Yes
These Videos are so Addicting....
AtomicShrimp is the uncle every kid looks forward to visiting
Hello Mike. Thank you for another interesting video. With regard to the energy consumption of the dehydrator, I expect that in actual fact, the wattage or current draw is not linear for the duration that it is in use. I have a dehydrator, albeit a different make and model to the one you own (it is one of the generic round dehydrators) but I expect it works in much the same way. Earlier this year I conducted a energy consumption test while dehydrating several boxes of mushrooms that had been reduced in price at the supermarket. I have a plug in energy monitor which logs the current and wattage drawn by the appliance while the appliance is active. It also gives real-time data on the display. Over an 8 hour period running at 55 degrees Celsius, the dehydrator used 26 pence of electricity, and if my memory serves me correctly, approximately 1.8kw. I also noted that current draw was not constant and would often drop very low. I expect that the heating element is thermostatically controlled and in fact you can hear it clicking on and off. This would make sense because if it were not controlled the temperature would increase beyond that set on the dial and there would be no way for the dehydrator to compensate the ambient temperature that it is working in.
Cheers.
So much sense in this. 😊
OH BOY I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE APPLE PIE VIDEO !
Sorry about the caps. I love apple pie.
Me: starts watching atomic shrimp for the scambaiting
Sees some other food video
Finds it entertaining
Now watches all of atomic shrimps videos
Commenting & liked for the algorithm - Great breakdown & analysis and appreciate all the work you put into this video. Keep up the great work.
Atomic Shrimp raisin the bar as usual. 🤣 Thanks for sharing Mike.
Much easier than drying them out in the sun like they used to back in the day. Much like you, I wonder if "sweeter" grapes make sweeter raisins. I guess we'll find out.
My favorite Christmas movie.
Not as cheap, to be sure. The sun is pretty free. Trying to keep the birds off them is the real hazard.
Is this a process thst should be hurried? I don't think thats the intention . Having fun with a dehydrator is fun however and all your questions will be answered. I doubt youd do this in southern Spain for example. Your comment its fine i just like to keep the shrimp on his toes ;)
They do look tasty
Make Jam im Curious. Or add to a chili sauce, could be onto something special
I've never seen brown raisins in stores, here they're all dark purple almost black.
Here in the uk we get brown sultanas, but mostly black raisins.
We have all sorts in Denmark, even some almost red.
I on the other hand have rarely ever seen raisins that aren't brown, even the store bought ones. Well, maybe there's a black one in between once in a while and they also have the tendency to become darker when baked, but the majority of freshly bought raisins is brown.
Learning new things about topics I didn’t even know I wanted to learn about.
"Sultanas" are also a particular variety of grape, specifically bred for the flavour obtained after drying in the sun. My hometown is heavy into the sultana industry.
Good video. Here's how I make my raisins:
Pick up several punnets of grapes from the supermarket bins.
Wash in cold water and remove the 10% of mouldy ones - this is why they were thrown away. Put the spoiled ones in the compost.
Boil a kettle on my super-efficient smoke-free woodstove, running on waste wood I picked up for free and brought home on my bike trailer.
Blanch them in a pan on the woodstove. This stops the natural moulds on the skin from consuming the fruit as it slowly dries.
Drain water onto washing up - multi-tasking that hot water!
Put the grapes into my dryer which hangs above the woodstove. It's got a zip door and 3 shelves, and is blue nylon net.
This only works in the winter - the stove is lit most of the time and gives a constant wash of warm air up through the dryer.
Wait a week. Things dry slowly over the woodstove.
Check they've all gone solid and dry... some are even slower and they stay in for another day or three.
Fill a re-used jam jar with a screw-top lid with the free raisins.
Cost... some water, a tiny amount of chainsaw oil and replacement chain (my saw runs on batteries charged up from the roof) and the share of the investment in the saw, dryer, stove (from 1998) and bicycle tyre wear.
Enjoy the raisins!
I have a grapevine in my yard and this is the first year where it's really given a lot of fruit. They're concord or similar (not seedless). So far I've been making jam and juice, and it's surprising how different that is from commercial grape products. It's a lot more complex almost like wine, even though there's no fermentation involved.
If you used 3.26 kwh at 15p per kwh, how did you get to a cost of £2.25? Surely you're looking at an electric cost of around 50p?
Interesting experiment, and the apple crumble looks good enough to eat. I think it depends on where you are and the type of grape. My aunt grows grapes for raisins, and they dry naturally in the California sun. Keep the videos coming.
@Jeanette Gant yes, but, California be like 🌞 and UK be like☔ to loosely quote the video 🤪
I enjoyed this video for so many raisins.
Great video well worth the experiment
Here in the US, Raisins produced in California are often sun dried. So it's likely the same is done in Spain. Even in cooler climates, it's possible that waste heat could be used to dry raisins.
Another FANTASTIC video to start my weekend off with! I'm curious that the last of the "most expensive" raisins were packaged for convenience - what might be the cost for them in a 1lb or 1/2kg package? SunMaid is likely the most popular brand here in the states and there's a large delta in cost between those and the "store brands" - for a snack the SunMaid ones are likely worth it but for cooking, baking or adding to a breakfast cereal or oatmeal the "generic" ones do the trick - again, great video I really enjoy ones like this!
You should try lacto-fermented plums next year and dehydrate those. They get a super intersting savory flavour.
Thank you, I never thought about the possibility that dried fruits are more cost-effective source of nutrition then fresh ones.
I never considered the challenge if raising grapes in the UK. Easier here in the US, still fresh grapes are costly to purchase. Logistics I suppose, they’re delicate. Interesting to compare the dried results. I always like it when Jenny is on. Glad you showed us the apple crumble, always enjoy when you cook.
My mother and I use the low heat generated by the gas oven's pilot light as a dehydrator. Works well, long as whatever that is drying in there isn't too thickly sliced. We've also made natto that way.
One important thing to consider is the breeding of the various varieties of grapes which focuses on the different uses of the fruit. Just as you have special varieties that have been bread for wine making, you have varieties that have been bread to make raisins and ultimately others that have been bread for the table grape. Using a table grape variety tends to have more and denser flesh compared to grapes used for wine or making raisins.
I've usually seen home-made raisins made from large grapes cut in half to reduce that gooey inside result you get from fatter grapes. That's a matter of taste though really.
I do natural dyeing of yarn w and fabrics, and now I wonder if I should try for dye out of grapes. Thanks for the idea.
When you talked about the apple and raisin and apple crumble, that was the only thing I wish to see as I watched the energy calculation part. Thought I would have to wait for another video, but pleasantly, its in the same video.
Great video, very entertaining and very thorough. Also, you always pick bangers from the UA-cam Audio Library.
Hey Shrimp, nice one as always - your dehidrator videos never fail to entertain :)
One idea for a 'version 2' (if one is ever to exist) would be to blanch the grapes in a highly concentrated sugar syrup.
You'll achieve blanching+osmotic water extraction+maybe it'll give the grapes more of that 'raisin' flavour/colour/aroma from the slightly caramelized/polymerized sugars in the syrup and the ones which will penetrate the grapes and further react inside ;)
(Food Engy who hasn't worked with dried fruits but who has a few guesses up the sleeves here hehehe)
I really liked your outro music on this episode. And of course the episode as well.
I believe the brown sugar flavour in raisins and sultanas come from the sun drying. you can buy shade dried grapes (such as zante currants), and they have much more of a fresh grape flavour and less caramel flavour.
I'm no chemist but perhaps the UV light brakes down complex sugars into simpler sugars, which I belief are generally sweeter. Just a wild guess.
In Romania we dry grapes ,apples, pears,pruins on a wire outside in the sunlight for few days,a week.Almost all people have grapes in they're garden
The outro music is very pretty!
How about making candy floss grape crumble ( ie without apples or dehydration)? I wonder if the flavour would survive the cooking process. Makes sure if you do that Eva doesn’t get any though 🐾❤️
That's a really interesting idea that simply never occurred to me - I will give it a try (maybe just with regular grapes as I think the candyfloss ones are out of season now)
@@AtomicShrimp I bought some beautiful candy floss grapes from Morriston yesterday 😋
That sounds a delicious idea.
I don't have a dehydrator, I usually get raisins by just leaving them lying around for a couple of days, or maybe weeks. For some reason grapes never rot at my place like other fruits would do if I left them for too long, they just dry out. Not completely though, unlike the raisins you get from the store they still stay somewhat juicy. Maybe with even more time, like several months, they might get as dry as the ones from the store, but I've never tried that. I always used up my juicy raisins long before that.
Also wanted to add, I don't put the raisins anywhere specific to dry, like a warm place or outside in the sun. When I first did that (by accident) they were just sitting in their box on the table far away from direct sunlight. And I also kept doing it like that - whenever I want self-made raisins I just put the box of grapes wherever it isn't in the way.
I think it'd be cute to dehydrate them by hand for homemade raisin breads or cookies (though there's a lot of slander about oatmeal raisin cookies, nothing could beat a fresh, warm, homemade batch in my opinion). If for no other reason than the satisfaction of saying you did it, especially if you can get the grapes from somewhere local for free or cheap. But really no utility in doing it just for the sake of snacking or using for salads or what have you, unless you had a more specific reason to do so.
I think that's the whole pull of all "do it yourself" kits. You know going in that it's gonna be far more expensive, but "I cared enough to do it myself" or "we had fun doing it together" in a family activity thing. Like putting together all the stuff once a year to full on, as close as possible, from scratch some sort of holiday dish or dessert.
I generally hate raisins in baked goods but there's something about a soft-baked oatmeal raisin cookie that is the perfect pairing with a glass of cold milk. Much better than chocolate chip.
I'd be intrigued to know what the green raisins would be like coated on chocolate. I think it'd be an interesting taste.
Electricity cost is 49p, it's just 3.26 x 15. So the update has a mistake too! Nice video though as always! We dehydrate carrots for rabbit snacks, economical as carrots are cheaper than grapes and dried carrots are much more expensive than raisins.
About a dozen years ago i was lucky enough to be at a farmer's market at closing time. I was able to buy a 20 pound box if fresh beautiful green grapes for $5. I am from Canada. I didn't boil the grapes. Just dehydrated them. Best grapes i've ever had. No chemicals
Full of chemicals, actually. Literally everything is chemicals, please stop misusing the term. Maybe it had no pesticides, maybe no harmful additives, but it was entirely made of chemicals
Alright then. No added chemicals.
In the netherlands we call them "rozijnen".
very nice! this channel is so entertaining
I believe all commercial raising drying today is done with heat, which may well result in some caramelization. The traditional method was to sun dry them on trays, which also may have caramelized the sugars. In sun drying there may also have been fermentation of sugars.
Cotton candy (floss) grapes are expensive as heck here in the U.S, don't know if it's the same for you, so I definitely treated them as a kind of treat.
As a wine maker the color coming out of the skins is normal and why we ferment wine on the skins. This is how you get red wine as most red grapes have green interiors.
I’m raisin hell right now 🥁
YOU JUST KILLED THE PLANET!!!
"RREEEEEE!!!!" 😨😤😱😵😰😡
kidding, loved the video. Lol
Mike always makes my day
Big Raisin approves this video! 👍🏽
Nice, thanks. Best wishes to you and Jenny.:)
Splendid, as always.
I do wonder whether the grapes they use for drying are different, smaller/less juicy varieties to the ones you eat.
Love your content man
the caramel flavor might be cause of higher temperature drying. maybe oven drying could be more cost effective
I once made some raisins by just leaving them out for a good while. They looked and tasted exactly like the ones you'd buy. you could probably just place them over a radiator in the winter and it'd work fine. You don't need to blanche them.
as a child I didn't want to eat my grapes one day, so I put them in a drawer, months later they were found, as raisins on the vine
A radiator?
"Didn't we already do this in a previous video?", I don't recall, although I haven't been on youtube as much lately so looking forward to a nice back catalogue of AS vids. I bet you're all jealous because you're all up to date lol.
I think a really good follow up video would be to see how you could reduce actual candy floss in a similar way.
Obviously the dehydrater wouldn't work but I'm pretty sure you could find a way to reduce candy floss in size whilst maintaining the flavour and possibly the structure in some way.
When working for a large Uk company that process raisins and sultanas They showed me they first wash the product when it arrives in a large tank of water, practically a swimming pool!. Asking why I was told they wash them in deep water because rat droppings don't float! The grapes are dries in the open air and sun shine.
I freeze my grapes and eat them frozen. They are delish. Also last ages 😊
Rasins are left to dry naturally, while sultanas are dipped in something to make them dry differently.
i wish you had tasted one of the checked cotton candy grapes to see if the blanching had affected the flavor
As much as i love grapes, i hate the feeling of the skin on my teeth. *Shivers*
Aren't these sultanas or are they the same thing I honestly don't know
I think unseeded grapes are so common these days they don't even need to label them as such. I don't remember eating seeded grapes since is was a child (I'm 35).
Hey, idk if you’re gonna read this, but just a heads up:
Be careful putting text in the bottom right corner, as that area is covered by the time indicator, so it’s not really legible.
I would dehydrate grapes if they were on sale or I scored free ones. Happened twice this year, rouge seedless white wine grapes, and seedless concord grapes from a friend. So next year 2022!
A fly with no wings is a walk...
A fly with no wings and no legs is a raisin ;)
I wonder if putting them in the oven on a low temperature between dehydrator cycle would help.
interesting, but maybe you should have tasted the boiled grape water (after it cooled down?)
why? it would only have the skin pigment in, none of the chemicals from the flesh
@@kalamaike well, thanks for your kind words...every day is a school day...
thought it would be at least a try instead of just pouring it down the sink, but that's me told, eh?
Altogether fascinating idea & follow through method. Economic results nor at all surprising. But adding the made raisins to apple crumble--yes! though some cinnemon too would have made it perfect for me. Well, quite a big lot of it...as an Anglo-Dane, cinnemon is a staple of life itself 🤗
I believe you mean cinnamon.
@@alexisw29577 My thanks! It's always been one if my tricky words. Better with the Danish: kanel.
Really like your desserts
A detail I’ve noticed is that seedless grapes are now the default and the packages no longer say they’re seedless.
240W at 13 amps is a little weird. At your voltage in the UK, 13A is about 3000W which is probably about 10 times what your dehydrator can actually draw. Its probably just an incorrectly marked "1.3A", but it would be pretty ridiculous to have it switching a 3kW element on and off. Just hope it doesn't get stuck on.