Freeze drying the harvest

[HeritageFan]

My medium Harvest Right freeze dryer can do 40 eggs in a session.
Raw, whisked, and I use the dividers from the guy that runs this channel
https://www.youtube.com/@live.life.simple
Re hydration is super easy.
Cold water straight into the mylar bags, stir until it’s “raw” consistency, and cook like a scramble or omelette.

When you buy from harvest right, you get a package- pump, mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and (when we bought ours) many other accessories.

We use it all the time.
Eggs.
Candy. Fruit. Veggies. Prepared meals. Soups and stews. Bone broth. So much more.
It is.... maybe 1.5x as loud as our incubators.

I am allergic to corn and soy, so can’t but the freeze dried foods off the shelves at the local camping/ adventure stores. But I can make us easy meals to take when we go backpacking, camping, etc... that won’t kill me.... literally. My reactions are anaphylaxis, not just....Feeling gross.

Properly dried and stored, most foods last about 25 years.
It is SO nice to go camping/ backpacking with a small cook stove, water or a filter setup, and food that weighs nothing and needs no cooler!

It’s also nice to not waste eggs. And know that you have food stored that will last way longer than anything canned or dehydrated!

We still also can, and use our dehydrator and smoker for different applications.

But we LOVE our Harvest Right freeze dryer and tbh, if I had to pick only one- I’d pick my Harvest Right!

....and no. I’m not a salesman or on their payroll I jist love this company and their USA made product!

Note-
Pre cooked and freeze dried meals need boiling water to re constitute. Raw foods need cold water and mixing, or time, depending on what it is.
The bags and O2 absorbers are not expensive on Amazon. I like the ones that have an expanding base/ stand up, and have a zipper seal at the top- it makes heat sealing SO much easier and really doesn’t cost more. Just look for the thicker bags- some are super thin. Clear fronts are no good, the silver ones w rounded corners are the best.
Preparing for eating-
This can still be done in the mylar bags. Covering the bag w a towel after adding the boiling water helps, and you have to learn to use smaller pieces of cooked meat/ veggies, smaller pastas if you are using them, etc.
- weigh your trays before and after freeze drying and make notes on the mylar bag labels as to how much water you need to add to re constitute <- the dividers, 10 “squares” per tray makes the math super easy. But do a test “try” on any new dish to make sure you don’t need to adjust.
- I also freeze dry zuchinni “lasagna” noodles successfully, along with many other things.

The tricks I’ve found are plentiful.... too much for a post.
But the important ones:
- no “solo” butter, but you can add
-some- butter to a dish if you are doing a meal. We love butter and “some” is relative.
- no jams/ chocolate. It all just melts and makes a big sticky mess....with nothing to save at the end for the effort.
- try to keep the trays as consistent as possible. We usually make a huge dish of stir fry, home made Mac and cheese w the smallest elbow noodles we can find (family favorite, esp w chopped ham or cooked, chopped turkey burger baked in), stew, chili, burrito filling, soup, bone broth, spaghetti (also w thin noodles broken up, and tossed into a marinara sauce w meat), stroganoff, mashed potatoes, ....etc
- we also often do separate items, so maybe cooked rice/ quinoa/ barley, ground beef or Turkey lightly seasoned, different veggies- so we can make different combinations if we are hunting/ fishing and need to cook something fresh with what we have available.
——the soups are also better if you add whatever starch you prefer (rice, pasta) separately. Potatoes usually do well in stews, just cut them up small-
.....don’t mix sweet and savory trays. They will share flavors a bit, but enough that everything will taste ....off
- try to keep trays somewhat consistent in texture. Like, don’t do fresh or cooked green beans with a couple trays of eggs. Do the watermelon serperate w other melons of similar consistency (watermelon is FANtastic freeze dried btw!) ....honeydew... not so great. I’ve not tried cantaloupe.
We usually do 40 eggs at a time in our medium freeze dryer.
Or, 4 cups per tray of whatever prepared meal we are wanting to store.
The dividers are worth every Penny
...as are the parchment paper liners from the same channel.

https://www.freezedryingsupplies.com/

 

[Sammster]

(watermelon is FANtastic freeze dried btw!)

I just did watermelon for the first time a couple weeks ago. Yummy

Thanks for the tips!