You can preserve your summer harvest with a freeze dryer, by making freeze dried vegetables. With convenience similar to regular frozen veggies, freeze drying also has the convenience and shelf-stability of dehydrating, but without the leathery and difficult to hydrate consistency.
Freeze dried vegetables are a great way to preserve your garden harvest, even during peak garden season. If you don’t have a garden, but do have a freeze dryer, you can also preserve frozen vegetables from the grocery store – especially if you get a great deal on them. You can prepare trays of vegetables in advance and freeze them in your deep freezer, and then run the freeze dryer loads as you get the chance and the time. A vegetable or fruit load in the freeze dryer can take 30 hours or more, so preparing some trays in advance to keep a steady rotation is a good idea.
What are the Disadvantages of Freeze Drying?
There are a few disadvantages to getting into freeze drying, first is the expense of the machine. It is several thousand dollars for a freeze dryer machine, usually three to five thousand for a mid sized machine. A mid sized machine can run about 30-50 pounds of food at a time, and most cycles take 20-50 hours to run.
The advantages of freeze drying are numerous. If you can afford a freeze dryer it makes amazing freeze dried food. You can preserve eggs, vegetables, fruits, meats, and some low-fat dairy products with it. You can also preserve entire, assembled, meals and keep them for backpacking, camping, or emergencies. Freeze drying has excellent retention of flavor, since the refrigerated vacuum just extracts water vapor from the cell structure, giving you a lighter and easier to hydrate texture compared to standard dehydrating.
For a healthy snack, you can make freeze dried fruit. It is high quality, delicious, and has a great crunch to it. Freeze dried peaches, for example, can be reconstituted to a nearly identical texture to fresh, and they go great in yogurt.
Instead of casseroles for my last grandbaby’s birth, I made a series of freeze dried meals that my daughter was greatly appreciative of. They work perfectly for emergency dinners when food just needs to get on the table, now. These meals can be ready in five minutes, just boil water, add, stir, and wait five minutes before serving.
If you have a lot of different foods to preserve, freeze drying is well worth looking into. Freeze dried veggies are nearly as healthy as fresh ones, and lose fewer nutrients in the freeze drying process compared to dehydrated or canned.
Making Freeze Dried Vegetables:
For garden fresh vegetables you’ll have to blanch them before putting them through the freeze and freeze drying process. If you’re running pre frozen vegetables from the grocery store, you can skip the blanching step. You can make your own freeze dried sweet corn, freeze dried broccoli, onions, sweet potatoes, green peas, and more. If you grow your own, you can insure that you’re preserving non-gmo products and can avoid the use of additives.
Ingredients:
- Vegetables (broccoli, carrots, radishes, beets for example)
Directions:
Wash all vegetables, scrub carrots, and soak garden fresh broccoli and cauliflower in a salt solution to get rid of broccoli worms.
Peel vegetables that need it, like carrots, potatoes, turnips, kohlrabi, and others. Peel thick broccoli stems too.
Corn should be sliced off the cob. The sliced end will help it with drying out during the freeze drying process.
Peas should be blanched, and slightly pressed to break their skins.
Slice into roughly evenly sized pieces depending on your purpose. I like 1/4″ by 1/2″ pieces as they’re evenly sized, reconstitute nicely, and can be easily eaten. Chop or snap green beans and asparagus. Dice or chop tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumber. All vegetables, including potatoes, should be blanched before freeze drying.
Blanch vegetables by dunking chopped, prepped veggies in boiling water for 30 seconds to 1 minutes, then dunking them into iced water till cool. Drain and shake/pat dry before transferring to freeze dryer trays. Try to keep excess water out of the freeze dryer.
Load freeze dryer trays, trays can be two layers but don’t overfill.
Run your freeze dryer with a pre-freeze cycle if the trays are freshly loaded with non-frozen veggies. Or you can load the trays with frozen veggies, OR pre-freeze the trays overnight before putting them in the freeze dryer.
Run for 24-36 hours. Veggies should be crisply dry and crumbly after a full run.
Let them warm to room temp and package in either glass jars that you vacuum seal, or mylar pouches or bags that you seal. Add an oxygen absorber to every package for long-term storage. Store away from direct light and temperature fluctuations.
How to Use Freeze Dried Vegetables:
Freeze dried vegetables can be used in soups, stews, as a side dish, in instant noodle style dishes, and as part of entire multi-ingredient instant freeze dried meals for camping or backpacking. They also make great, quick, side dishes if you run out of time for cooking up fresh or frozen veggies. You can also use reconstituted veggies in stir-fry, simply whisk together ginger and soy sauce and add it to the first part of the rehydrating water for an extra kick and avoid using too much water.
You can freeze dry assembled vegetable dishes like pico de galo and fresh salsa too. Make your own, with your freeze drier, and avoid additives, additional preservatives, and allergens. Freeze dried carrots and beets can make great toppings for salads, if cut small.
If you have allergy concerns in your family, like egg or wheat allergies, avoid freeze drying items that include those ingredients for safety.
You can also freeze dry vegetable and legume based dips and sauces, like hummus, just avoid anything with a high fat content like avocado or guacamole. The fat doesn’t dry well. I also don’t recommend freeze drying items that contain alcohol, as it can affect the oil pump.
Freeze dried vegetables have many of the same health benefits and essential vitamins and minerals as their fresh counterparts. Freeze dried vegetables have very little reduction in their nutrition value after freeze drying, it’s about the same as your standard frozen vegetables. As well as delicious taste and long term shelf stability.
Use freeze dried onions and garlic with roasts, or you can use dehydrated versions for slow cooker roasts.
Freeze dried carrots and cucumber make a great guilt-free snack, especially with different spices added to them before the drying process. They make very acceptable veggie straw imitations that are 100% veggies.
How long do These Vegetables Last?
With proper sealed storage with an oxygen absorber in the container, these great tasting preserved veggies have a shelf life of up to 25 years. Simply keep your jars or mylar bags in a dark, cool environment. Use larger totes to store bags for additional safety, and keep clear glass out of direct sunlight or the color of the preserved food can fade.
I’ve found that the color of the preserved food doesn’t change as long as the jar or bag remains sealed, and after opening, the food is consumed in a week or two at most. After a few months unsealed, the colors can fade and become closer to dehydrated food’s colors, at least with watermelon.
Back to You:
Make your own freeze dried vegetables and you’ll have your own toppings for many different quick and easy meals. These veggies have a similar nutritional value of their fresh counterparts and are great for long term storage, camping, or preparing for emergencies. They have such flavor, that, if you have a freeze dryer, I highly recommend freeze drying up some veggies this growing season/summer.
What foods would you try to freeze dry? Leave a comment!
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