Want a healthier snack? If you’ve got organic grapes, learn how easy it is to make your own organic raisins in the oven, solar oven, or dehydrator. Includes how to source, prepare, and store homemade raisins.
Why Make Your Own Organic Raisins
If you’re concerned about the snack foods you and your kids are eating, learning how to dehydrate your own organic small fruits is a great idea. Once you’ve mastered raisins and apricots, you’ll be ready to learn how to make kale chips and jerky, too!
In fact, right after you master raisins, you may want to learn to make your own fruit leather!
Raisins are easy to incorporate into a wide range of healthy foods. From rice pudding to trail mix to cookies, raisins are naturally sweet and flavorful.
They’re perfect for little hands that need an after school snack.
Can I Make Raisins Without a Dehydrator?
Of course! Dehydrators are special units designed to slowly and effectively remove the moisture from food to make it safe for storage. Their special temperature regulators allow them to dehydrate foods at lower temperatures to prevent over-drying, scorching and burning.
In an Oven
However, you can achieve very similar results in a conventional oven set on its lowest temperature (usually around 170 degrees).
The only real drawback to using your oven is that you have to check on your dehydrating foods constantly to keep them from over-drying. Here are some other tips:
- Use a timer set to go off every half hour to twenty minutes to check the grapes to see how they’re drying out.
- Use the convection setting, if there is one, to circulate the air better.
- Be sure to toss your raisins every time you check on them to rotate them.
- Be sure to put your raisins on parchment paper lined baking sheets with sides (like jelly roll pans) to prevent your raisins from sticking and/or falling off their sheets.
In a Solar Oven
You can also use a solar oven to make raisins. Because of the sometimes robust nature of grapes, dehydrating raisins in a solar oven can produce mixed results with “done-ness”. If you’re ever unsure about whether or not your raisins are truly dehydrated, store them in the refrigerator and eat them within a month.
The most important thing to remember when using your solar oven to dry fruit is to vent the lid to allow the wet air to escape.
Learn to use your solar oven to dehydrate fruit – generally follow the isntructions in this article which if for making apple chips.
Sourcing Grapes for Organic Raisins
Grow Your Own
The first thing you’re going to need are organic grapes. The easiest way to ensure the quality of your grapes is to grow them yourself. Grapes are wonderful to grow in the backyard because they fruit within two to three years. By comparison, a fruit tree takes about three to five years to come into production.
Grapes are relatively simple to grow, too. To learn to do that, click here.
Requiring even water, good mulch, and something to grow on, grapes are amongst the simplest food producing plants to grow. They do require pruning for fruit production, which makes them a little harder than something like a currant.
A Good Project for Kids
Not to beat a dead horse, but another great reason to grow your own grapes is that they make a good project for children. Kids can be taught to grow and even prune a grape vine. They can also be taught to process the grapes into homemade juice or raisins.
If you’d like your kids to have a “fruitful” job around the home and land, give them a few grape vines to tend. Get them off their i-device and into the garden.
To help them keep track of all their garden projects (or yours), and to help them learn even more about what can grow in the garden, be sure to check out The Gardening Notebook below:
Local Farms
If you can’t grow them, another great place to find organic grapes are your local farmer’s markets and/or CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture groups). If you can’t find certified organic grapes local to you, talk to your local growers about how they grow their grapes.
Organic certification is an expensive and lengthy process that not all growers can go through. However, their growing practices may be organic.
They only way to know is to ask them and find out. Farmers love to talk about their product, so strike up a conversation and learn something!
To Make Organic Raisins from Fresh Grapes
For a quick overview of the raisin making process, please watch this short video. Afterwards, you can continue to read the instructions for more specifics about dehydrating grapes.
Preparation of Grapes
Amounts really don’t matter here so wash and de-stem as many grapes as you’d like to have organic raisins.
Cut or Pop?
Grapes will dehydrate better is they’ve either been cut in half, or popped. If they’re not at least punctured, they have a tendency to blow up like a balloon and/or dry funky.
I’ve tried it both ways and neither way was faster, to be honest. So, I’ll give you both directions.
Popping the Skins
- To pop the skins of your grapes, place them in a pot and cover them with water.
- Simmer them until the skins pop.
- Remove them from the heat and drain immediately.
- OR, you can simply give them a good squish between your fingers. This works well if the grapes are firm and newly harvested.
Cutting the Skins
You can also simply cut each grape in half. This took a little bit longer but I liked the results better.
I dehydrate my organic raisins on a “living foods”, or raw, setting. Consequently, I don’t like the idea of simmering my grapes to make raisins. However, both methods work just fine so do whatever you like best.
Dehydrating Organic Raisins
- Move each grape into place on the racks of your dehydrator or a parchment-paper lined baking sheet. This is something you need to be detail oriented about. The grapes should NOT be on top each other. I know it’s a pain to do double check if you’re doing a big batch. However, you’ll be so sad if you’ve finished your batch of organic raisins only to have them spoil a month later because there’s one, stinkin’ raisin that didn’t dry all the way because it was clinging to another one.
- Put the racks in your dehydrator and set to at least 135 F/57 C degrees for about 24 hours. Check them every now and then to see how they’re doing.
- If you’re dehydrating in an oven, set it as low as it will go. Vent the oven with a spoon if it wont go to at least 170 F/77 C degrees. Use the convection setting, if you have one. Stir often. This could take as few as six hours or as many as twelve.
If you’re using your solar oven, vent the lid and check your raisins often. Plan for this process to take anywhere from two to twelve hours.
Storing Organic Raisins
Test your raisins for doneness before storing them. A trick that Shelle Wells taught me in her fine book Prepper’s Dehydrator Handbook is to place your finished product into a mason jar with a lid.
If condensation forms on the glass, you’re product is too wet to store. If that happens, put them back in the dehydrator.
Shelle can teach you more about storing your dehydrated product, too, but the general rule of storing home dehydrated fruits are one month at room temperature and about a year in the freezer.
- Be sure to keep your newly-made organic raisins in an airtight container.
- If you’re storing the raisins at room temperature, be sure to do it in a cool, dark place.
I seriously doubt your homemade, organic raisins will last even a month, but maybe you have more restraint than we do.
More Grape Resources:
More Things to Do With Grapes
Instant Pot Grape Juice Recipe
This is our very favorite grape juice recipe and it's made with Concord grapes, or any Concord type like Saturn or Sunbelt. You can also make this recipe with green or red grapes. The more ripe and fresh the grapes are, the more juice you'll get through processing and the better the flavor will be.
How to Make Grape Jam Recipe with low and full sugar options.
Canning Grape Pie Filling and a Grape Pie Recipe
Propagating Grapes (5 Ways!)
Don’t the grapes need to be a seedless variety?
Yes, if you don’t like to eat grape seeds. The seed pocket is pretty easy to pop out as you’re preparing the grapes for dehydrating, if you happen to grow a seeded variety. We had seeded Concords that made wonderful raisins and I would pop out the seeds as I went. You miss some, but that’s life. Concord raisins taste just like grape candy, only better. I finally decided to grow a seedless variety. You know, of all the things I miss about our last move, those grape vines are high up on the list.
If you’re purchasing, feel free to buy seedless and save yourself some time.
What a great idea! Would this work on something like cranberries?
Thanks for stopping by, Nicole! The method for dehydrating cranberries is a little different, though not much, if you want a craisin-type result from a raw cranberry. If all you want are dried cranberries to powder, just put raw cranberries in your dehydrator. The cranberries will swell up and dry in shape, no shriveling. These can be powdered and used as I talk about in this post – Heart Healthy Cranberry.
With grapes, you can easily split the skin of a raw grape with a knife, no need to heat them up and pop their skins. Either way works, but if you want a “raw foods raisin”, cutting them by hand is essential. It’s super time-consuming, though, and the time of year that cranberries are available for sale, I’m usually too busy to sit and individually lance each cranberry. Also, if you want a sweeter cranberry, you’re going to want to give them a syrup bath before you dehydrate them so you’ll be heating them up anyway. There are some other posts to read below.
If you want a result more like a raisin, Don’t Waste The Crumbs can tell you what she does here. Spruce Eats includes a method for sweetening the cranberries so they taste more like craisins.
Hope that helps!
Excellent post. Well done. Boss!! I live off grid and homesteader my whole life. Born and raised Hawai’i and Maui. Check me out at http://www.hawaiisimplynaturalrestaurant.com Have a nice day. Aloha is a two way street. Spread it like you do your wisdom. Mahalo!! Sincerely, Elizabeth
Sweet! Are you off grid on Honokaa now? What a fascinating place to live! You could make these with air drying – or any native fruit – but humidity plays a big part in the drying process, obviously. Is it humid where you are? Either way, a solar oven would work well for you!
I’ve never thought to make these before! My kids love raisins on road trips, they’re the perfect snack!
They’re really easy! If you don’t grow grapes or don’t have a line on a bulk amount of them, it probably makes more sense to just buy organic in small batches. I mean, moms are busy, right? BUT, if you DO have a lot of them, then making your own is super smart!
Thanks for stopping by, Stef!
I have a dehydrator that I use all the time, but I somehow never thought to make raisins! I can’t wait to try this. We have a grapevine of grapes that are green but taste like Concords. I bet they will make delicious raisins! Thanks!
Sweet – those should turn out wonderfully!
I’ve dehydrated a lot of things, but I’ve never made raisins! I hope we get enough grapes this year to try this out. They look so much more delicious than store bought ones! Yummmm!
So glad you found it useful! You can control what goes on them and into them when you make your own, which is alluring for the healthy family. Paying for organic raisins seems silly if you grow your own grapes and I do love eating raisins in the winter!
Wow! What a great idea… and I don’t know why I’ve never thought about growing grapes!
They’re easier than fruit tress in a lot of ways and will give you a decent crop inside two to three years. Fruit trees usually take three to five. I hope you’ll give it a try!
what about grapes with seeds ?
For old fashioned, “wild” grapes like Scuppernong, you’ll need to seed the grapes before dehydrating because their seeds are just so large and hard. For table grapes, you’ll have to experiment if you don’t want to seed each grape. Some table grape varieties only have the tiniest of seeds that present while growing and you can really just leave them in – they’ll be slightly crunchy, but not necessarily bothersome. The larger the grape, the harder they’ll be when dehydrated.
If you decide you want to see the grapes, simply slice them in half horizontally or vertically and pry out each seed with a the sharp point of a knife – a paring knife is a good size.
I hope that helps!