Instructions

1. Sort the cranberries and discard any that are soft or pale. A berry already on the turn will not improve in the machine, and this is your only chance to find it.
2. Pour boiling water over them and watch for the skins to split. That split is the trick of the whole recipe — an intact cranberry skin is waxy, and a berry that never pops stays hard and sour forever.
3. Drain them as soon as most have cracked instead of letting them sit. Left in hot water they collapse, and a collapsed berry dries to a flat disc with no chew in it.
4. Toss the drained fruit with the honey and both zests while it is still warm. Warm skin takes a coating; cold skin sheds it.
5. Spread them on a lined sheet and put them in the freezer for a couple of hours. Freezing bursts the cells from the inside, which is a second route into a fruit that resists being opened.
6. Move them from the freezer straight onto mesh, well spaced. They weep as they thaw, and a crowded tray welds the batch into a single sheet of fruit.
7. Dehydrate at 135 °F for 14 hours. Expect them to look finished long before they are, because the surface sets early and the centre is the last part to give up.
8. A finished berry is wrinkled and chewy and shows no juice when torn open. Judge one cold, and if the torn face glistens the tray goes back in.
9. Condition them for a week in a jar you shake daily, then tighten the lid. After that they hold six months in the dark — the syrup coating means a warm cupboard will glue them together, so use the back of a cool one.