I love the primitive, natural look of decorating with dried oranges for the holidays! Whether it’s hung like garland, strung for ornaments, or made in to a cool wreath (like this!), I love it all. Plus it’s perfect for garnish in a holiday cocktail!

If you’re trying to come up with an inexpensive gift exchange gift, you could add some of your homemade dried oranges into a mason jar with a cinnamon stick, a sugar cube, and maybe some dried cherries. Pair it with an inexpensive bottle of bourbon and then your gift recipient has everything they need to make at home infused bourbon for a perfect old fashioned. Or you can put the dried oranges in individual baggies with things like a sprig of rosemary and a cinnamon stick to make a simmer pot kit that is a cute inexpensive, homemade gift for a teacher or neighbor.

I’ve tried several attempts at drying oranges in the oven over the years, and last year I dried oranges using a bunch of tips I’ve gathered and finally did it right! These pictures/instructions are all from last Christmas when I dried out these oranges. I didn’t want to post it until I knew how they lasted for the next year! I just pulled our Christmas decor out and my dried oranges still look great and are mold free!

How To Make the Perfect Dried Oranges

1. Pick the hardest oranges you can find at the grocery store

I mean don’t pick green ones because those won’t be as pretty, but you know what I mean!

2. Cut them with a SHARP knife as thin as you can

You don’t need the fanciest kitchen knife in the world, but sharpening your knife will allow you to get as thin of a cut as you can (I sharpen my knives with a whetsone!). Aim to get about 1/8″ slices.

3. Lay rags over the oranges for a few hours

This will soak up excess moisture! Bonus points if you lay another baking sheet on top of the towel and weigh it down a bit to press out some of the excess moisture.

4. Bake in the oven if you don’t have a dehydrator

I don’t have a dehydrator so I do mine in the oven! Preheat oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Line the oranges on a parchment lined baking sheet with no overlap. Every 30 minutes, flip the oranges. As they get closer to drying out, I check on them more frequently just to make sure they don’t burn and flip more frequently than that

If you have multiple trays of oranges in the oven and do not have a convection oven, be sure to rotate your trays not only in different directions but between the different racks

Cook them until they are completely dried through– this is going to vary person to person, oven to oven, orange to orange, but some of mine were ready before others and so I took them out (so they didn’t burn) and let the others continue to dry out. Overall, the process took me over 3 hours. So be prepared to be at this for a while!

5. Store your oranges in a ziploc bag with all the air squeezed out for next year!

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