Has anyone oven dried and stored strawberries and,if so, how would you rate them?

[Alison]

Drying fruit in an oven is extremely difficult as you need a current of air as well as just the heat, and it is far too easy to just 'cook' your strawberries rather than dry them. Although food dryers are quite expensive, if you have a lot of produce, I think they are well worth the money. But don't go for the cheap little models (usually circular kind) but instead choose the large rectangular ones with several trays. It is fairly easy to convince yourself that the investment is worth it, as they should last for ever.

Like Scarey55 I would back making fruit leathers, and strawberries would be perfect for that. They seem to capture the genuine 'strawberry' taste and you can store the pieces in jars without the need for freezing or preserving. We had a huge glut of peaches and I turned the entire surplus into wonderful peach leather which we enjoyed all winter long!

If I HAVE managed to persuade you to spend your hard earned money on a food dryer, use it for your surplus apples, as you can enjoy the dried slices all year round, and as for tomatoes... just like sun dried tomatoes...... don't even get me started!

I've only got a cheapo circular one and it's brilliant, have had it for several years and use it loads every year. Think it was about £30 ish and I'm more than glad I didn't splash out over 3 times that on a more expensive model.

Re drying in ovens, I do think it's more difficult but it does depend on your oven, if you have the right settings (very low with fan) then it's much easier, we dried a load of mushrooms on holiday in the New Forest a few years ago in that way but remembered to take the dehydrator with us when we went back a couple of years later

[BertieFox]

"I've only got a cheapo circular one and it's brilliant"

I'm sure they work just as well, but it's all about quantity. As most things take at least a whole day to dry, if you are trying to dry a large quantity of fruit or vegetables you would need to run it for ever. A large one, with the trays, even though expensive at the outset, is more efficient and you can do very large quantities at the same time. Come the tomato harvest, we don't really have any other option if we want lots of dried tomatoes for winter.

In the end, it's horses for courses, and we all use what works for us, thinking about the quantity of produce you want to process. Luckily there is very little to go wrong with any food dryer, so if you think of it as a lifetime purchase, it softens the blow of spending a bit more.