Freeze Drying Food

[Ascholten]

Oh y ah I hear freeze dry ice cream is the bomb. The sammiches and stuff yah i will try that, the thing is, figuring out the time to do it.

I just recently freeze dried some refried beans, looked ok so bagged it, a minute later, cold spots... dammit. That means you got some moisture in it still, it didn't completely dry out. I'll cook them later today and see how they taste reconstituted. bulkier stuff you have to run a lot longer to get to dry out. Since it's in a near perfect vaccuum, you don't have air, to transfer the heat to the stuff, like you would in an oven, so even though you heat the tray, the only way the heat gets up and thru is for it to go up through the lower parts of whatever... and once those lower parts are dried up, they don't conduct heat as much,so it's a bit of a science to it too.

Easiest thing is to just give it an extra 12 hours and let it run, that way you know you got stuff dried.

Aaron

 

[Ascholten]

Here are some pictures of Freeze Dried stuff. This all has been sitting on the shelf about two years now. Im going to try a few just to see how it is, I know it's good but well, like to try things anyways Juuuuuust to make sure.

This is just mixed veggies, I run em quick through a food processor. Cauliflower, Green Beans, Carrots, Squash, Peas. basically when I am processing stuff, the lil bits left over I freeze and when I get nuff for a bag I FD then bag it ! Simply throw boiling water into it, wait a minute or two, drain any excess water off, salt / pepper / butter / whatever you want and serve. yes it's that simple

This is an ENTIRE Gyro that I freeze dried. The veggies and cucumber sauce, i forget the name of it, is under the meat, I did that to make sure it dried properly. For this you spray it with a sprayer, you really don't want to soak and make the bread soggy. Spray it good several times, when it seems the meat etc is hydrated enough, throw in microwave for about 30 seconds, done. If it's a bit crunchy still, whoosh some more water on it,

The crust taste different, it's more like a crunchy toast at this point but VERY good. I actually like the crunchiness over regular crust. I don't have a picture cause I ate it but I can also FD whole slices of pizza, and rehydrate the exact same way YUM !!

Just some beef I cut in chunks and smoked in a yummy goo barbecue sauce, the FD. For them, put in shallow dish of boiling water, let set a few minutes to re hydrate. The water that is left might have meat juices in it so throw it on your noodles or whatever, waste not want not. again, nuke it or in the oven and zoom, got some beefie logs.

Hamburgers. let sit in shallow dish boiling water a few minutes, well these actually go a bit faster, you'll get the hang of it. when hydrated, throw in nuker to heat up, a minute maybe?? then throw on a bun with all your toppings and good to go.

The foods you get from Freeze Drying taste very good, are more nutritious, last a long long time, and being they are dry, there are no worries about freezers dying, power dying, or dropping bottles and slop all over. Store em in the garage, in a shelf, in the bedroom closet, under the couch. wherever you want.

ENJOY !!

Aaron