Freeze Drying Digest

[Sally PB]

A lot of very useful and helpful information, @WthrLady! Thank you for taking the time to write it all down.

I may never get a freeze dryer, but I keep thinking I'd like to... Hubby is not interested, due to the price, mostly.

 

[WthrLady]

How do you pick what to freeze dry? Just experimenting?

I've been making a list of things we used to buy or want when camping/scouting, or things we wished we had. I'm keeping sweets w sweets, savory w savory, and stinky with stinky when I dry to not mix flavors.

The tarts being an exception.

 

[WthrLady]

I have my hose draining into the bucket too. I would dump it before using the FD again simply because I don't want water just sitting in the bucket. Knowing my luck, my granddaughter would get into it...

Exactly!

 

[WthrLady]

The cheese is out. 12 hours
Each tray held 4 cups and that fit easily into 1qt.
It was on sale for $2 a 8pz -2 cup- bag and I use a LOT of it.
Remember, I'm an hour roundtrip from the closest market.

The tarts are good - but I won't bother again. It was more for fun.DH said they're good dipped in tea. I wanted more of a snap from the dried blueberry center, but it's more of an impossible to snap chew. Like insanely stale taffy/tootsie roll, which is not what I was going for.

 

[WthrLady]

DS texted me before bed last night and said pumpkin pie with chocolate graham cracker crust, so THATS happening.

 

[lomine]

I've been FDing for a month or two now. Done a few loads. My dog is on a raw diet so some of it was his food for quick/easy travel meals and things for treats (raw chicken wings, pork ribs, thin steaks etc).

So far I've just been experimenting on other things. Various fruits and veggies and some of my homemade goat cheese with seasonings. My personal favorite fruit has been the banana slices from very, almost over ripe bananas. Don't use any that have any green, they leave a weird aftertaste. Family really likes the strawberries and raspberries. Pineapple are really good too.

I've already got too many zucchinis coming out of the greenhouse so I sprinkled them with various spice mixes and FD them. Tried from raw zucchini and roasted; my mom liked from raw but everyone else preferred the roasted.

I did a weird, random thing with pineapple and coconut cream. I put the fresh pineapple with some of the juice in a blender until almost smooth and then added coconut cream. I don't have any measurements, just kind of went for a consistency I though looked good. Put the mixture in silicon ice cube molds and froze. After FD they were very fragile but didn't fall apart. When eaten they just disintegrate and had a lovely tropical flavor. Was a fun and unique eating experience.

One really great tip I learned on a FD Facebook group was to change the default extra dry time from 2 hours to 24 hours. You do it under the customize menu before you start a load. You can't over dry something, so that extra time helps in case something happens and you can't get around to unloading the machine. Then you don't have to worry about rewarming the trays if they aren't done.

 

[WthrLady]

But next up is celery, carrot shreds, spring onion, leseur peas, and some horseradish

 

[WthrLady]

One really great tip I learned on a FD Facebook group was to change the default extra dry time from 2 hours to 24 hours. You do it under the customize menu before you start a load. You can't over dry something, so that extra time helps in case something happens and you can't get around to unloading the machine. Then you don't have to worry about rewarming the trays if they aren't done.

BINGO.

 

[WthrLady]

I did a weird, random thing with pineapple and coconut cream. I put the fresh pineapple with some of the juice in a blender until almost smooth and then added coconut cream. I don't have any measurements, just kind of went for a consistency I though looked good. Put the mixture in silicon ice cube molds and froze. After FD they were very fragile but didn't fall apart. When eaten they just disintegrate and had a lovely tropical flavor. Was a fun and unique eating experience.

frozen pinacolada there's also recipes out there for margharitas too

 

[WthrLady]

In the deep freeze I have a tray of diced celery, two trays of spring onions, a tray of carrot shreds, and a tray of horseradish, sauerkraut, and peas, in silicone molds.
Tomorrow, I'll pop those out of the molds and put them on tray 5 and toss everything into the FD.
This is stuff I use all year round, but in small quantities, but you can't buy it that way, so there is a lot of waste buying fresh.
Now, I can buy it on sale and use what I need when I need it.