Dehydrator or oven: which actually works for drying citrus

If you want to dry your own citrus, you have three options and they are not equal. Here is the honest version, including the bits people leave out.

Dehydrator

Time: 8 to 12 hours at around 57°C.
Result: The best of the three. Even colour, flat slices, no browning.

A dehydrator moves air at a low, constant temperature, which is exactly what drying fruit needs. The slices dry evenly from both sides, keep their colour, and come out flat rather than curled.

The catch is that you need to own one, and it will be running most of a day. It is quiet and cheap to run, but the kitchen will smell of oranges for about two days, which is either lovely or not depending on your view.

Oven

Time: 3 to 5 hours at the lowest setting your oven will do, ideally 80 to 100°C, door propped open with a wooden spoon.
Result: Workable, but browner and more curled.

Most home ovens will not go low enough. Anything above about 100°C starts cooking the sugars, and cooked sugar goes brown. That is why oven-dried orange often comes out looking caramelised rather than bright.

Propping the door open lets moisture escape instead of steaming the fruit, and it helps a lot. So does turning the slices every hour, which means you are tethered to the kitchen for an afternoon.

On power, an oven at 100°C for four hours costs meaningfully more than a dehydrator running overnight. If you are drying one batch a year it does not matter. If you are doing it regularly, it adds up.

Air drying

Time: Several days to a couple of weeks.
Result: Unpredictable in New Zealand.

It works in a hot dry climate. In most of New Zealand the humidity means the fruit has a real chance of going mouldy before it goes dry, particularly anything thicker than a few millimetres. We would not bother.

What matters more than the method

Slice thickness. Three to five millimetres, and consistent. Thick slices stay leathery in the middle and will go off in storage. Thin ones burn. A mandolin is more useful here than any appliance.

Patting them dry. Blot the slices on a tea towel before they go in. Surface moisture is the first thing that has to evaporate, and you can remove it in ten seconds instead of an hour.

Knowing when to stop. A finished slice should feel dry and slightly stiff, with no give in the middle. Any softness means water is still in there, and that is what causes mould in the jar three weeks later.

When it is worth just buying them

Drying your own is genuinely satisfying, and for a one-off batch of Christmas decorations it is a good afternoon.

For drinks, the sums are less kind. A day of appliance time plus a couple of kilos of fruit gets you somewhere near a $12 pouch, and unless your slicing is very consistent, the results will not be as even. Our Citrus Seconds are $11.50 for the slices that did not pass on looks, which is the cheapest dried citrus we sell and identical in every way that affects a drink.

Everything we make is handcrafted in small batches here in the Waikato. Browse the dried citrus range, with free shipping on orders over $100.