Off Grid Home Forums Technical Discussion Freeze drying food Re: Freeze drying food

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I’ve found this is all an experiment. I’ve dried alot of scrambled eggs because we have chickens. I don’t know if they will be very good. I haven’t tried to reconstitute and eat them yet. I figured if I am hungry I can add them to rice,etc.

All Meats seem to work well. It is amazing how fragile meat becomes when completely dry, you have to handle it carefully or the strands pulverize and you have meat power. I fry hamburgers normally and cut the patties in half to fit in the jars right off the grill. The quicker you freeze, the more the flavor is locked in. Chicken and turkey work well and are easy.

I’m currently trying to freeze dry a bunch of canned tuna that is at its expiration date. It seems to mat together and the moisture comes out very slowly. We’ve decided to use it all in Tuna Helper and freeze dry that. It is kind of slow, but works pretty well.

Boxed mac and cheese works well, but I haven’t reconstituted it. I have eaten it dry and it tastes ok. American fried potatoes in the deep fat fryer with vegetable oil works great if you take the oil off after cooking. The fries taste like thick potato chips when dry, I used a bunch of last year’s potatoes after we planted this spring. I just cut off any rotten or black spots, sliced them and tossed them in the hot oil.

I don’t know about the ice crystal formation in smaller particles. Sounds like a good thing to try. I’ve found the freeze drying is quicker when you make smaller sized particles.

I recently bought a Savant vapor trap that gets down to -55 C that I want to try fruit on. The hole in the top is big enough to freeze a pint jar. I will let you know how it works when I get around to it.

I honestly think any vegetable will work to freeze dry if you don’t mind it being mushy when it reconstitutes. I have done green beans and raw peas, but haven’t reconstituted them. I think the reconstituted food will be like the same food if you froze it and then thawed it to eat later. We will do most of our green peppers this year, since we cook them anyway, if it does get mushy it won’t matter.

After drying we vacuum seal in bags and then put them in mylar bags in five gallon buckets.

I think it is a great process if you can find the equipment cheap. I have about $500 in my setup, but I found the flexidry at an auction cheap. I noticed in the link I sent earlier it says it works but the vacuum gauge is broken. The gauge is very important so you know when/if you are below the triple point.