Freeze Drying Food

[grubworm]

the wife has been canning a lot over the years and we figured we need to take food storage to the next level, so i set up an area to do freeze drying. works great for long term storage and works exceptionally well for making homemade MREs that are not chocked full of crap ingredients and preservatives. i saw a thread a while back about someone asking about freeze dried recipes and i dont think it got any traction and i cant even find the thread now.
i figured with tens of thousands of members...there has got to be at least a few on here who freeze dry food and have some recipes for freeze dried camp meals. pretty much any meal can be freeze dried and i can always copy some mountain house meals, but was just wondering if anyone in the OB community had any input. some things freeze dry better than others and there will be a lot of experimenting and along with that, some failures that just wont dry or taste right. i always like to hear other people's advice on things like this because a lot of folk are just simply way more creative than me...

we also live in hurricane alley, so freeze drying food is a great thing for when we are out of power for weeks at a time and i love the idea of homemade MREs for times like that in addition to having simple meals out in the boonies. i ate a LOT of freeze dried eggs being on subs and i really liked them...now i can make my own.

i didnt realize it, but there is a huge craze right now over freeze dried candy. i have heard about freeze dried ice cream and freeze dried ice cream sandwiches, but they are also freeze drying candies like skittles and bit-o-honeys and stuff like that and apparently it is really good.

im really looking forward to freeze dried stuff for camping like freeze dried eggs, hash browns, biskits and gravy, etc. basically do what mountain house has done...only better since i dont have to follow FDA rules for adding preservatives since im not selling to others or trying to get a 30 year shelf life. THIRTY YEARS??? i've gone thru 4 houses and 3 wives in the last 30 years...i really dont expect to keep a pouch of dehydrated hash browns that long! crazy...
i was told SPAM is too fatty to freeze dry...but im going to try it anyway. never saw an MRE that was SPAM, egg and rice. that really needs to happen...
also...i've been vacuum sealing for 10 yrs now and always used the regular sealer like the food saver. i switched to a chamber sealer and it is a HUGE difference! you can seal juices with this and its great for marinating meat and doing sous vide. thats what i LOVE about being retired...i get to stay home when i want and play with fun toys!

 

[Ethan N]

Awesome work man. Frozen meat and canned stuff is the best I've done so far, I always end up digging into it for a snack!

Your homemade MREs will be perfect for you, military MREs are formulated by professional nutritionists. They've even been tested by scientists (Army researchers dug into the effects of MREs on gut health, here's what they discovered | Article | The United States Army ). Now, of course they aren't designed for normal situations, so the ingredients don't read like normal foods. They're great to supply a broad range of people who generally have the same diet restrictions.

 

[grubworm]

Awesome work man. Frozen meat and canned stuff is the best I've done so far, I always end up digging into it for a snack!

Your homemade MREs will be perfect for you, military MREs are formulated by professional nutritionists. They've even been tested by scientists (Army researchers dug into the effects of MREs on gut health, here's what they discovered | Article | The United States Army ). Now, of course they aren't designed for normal situations, so the ingredients don't read like normal foods. They're great to supply a broad range of people who generally have the same diet restrictions.

good find on the army research on MREs and very interesting about the gut health associated with them. i kind of misspoke...we had a lot of freeze dried and dehydrated food on the subs, NOT MRE's. the only freeze dried meals i know of are the civilian ones like mountain house and i read the ingredients on some and a few had some chemical names in there and a few weird ingredients. some seemed to be pretty much all natural stuff in there...guess it depends on what the food is and what they need to add to make sure it keeps for 30 years.

one thing that is really good about freeze drying at home is that it retains somewhere in the high 90% range of all the nutrients where canning only retains around half the nutrients due to the heat process. we have a big garden, so this is a great way to preserve the veggies AND retain a lot of the nutes. who knew? i should have gotten into this years ago!

 

[socal66]

This is something interesting that I never really considered doing myself until your post here brought this up as a possibility. I had experimented with doing dehydrated food way back when I backpacked more with mixed results.

What is the entry cost to doing this? I assume that washing machine looking device in your photo is the thing that does the freeze drying.

What are some typical foods that the home-based freeze drying process is the go to way vs. canning?

 

[Diamond_king999]

Homemade MREs, camping meals, and even freeze-dried candy are all worth trying. Don't worry about Spam being too fatty, give it a shot anyway.

 

[grubworm]

This is something interesting that I never really considered doing myself until your post here brought this up as a possibility. I had experimented with doing dehydrated food way back when I backpacked more with mixed results.

What is the entry cost to doing this? I assume that washing machine looking device in your photo is the thing that does the freeze drying.

What are some typical foods that the home-based freeze drying process is the go to way vs. canning?

i tried dehydrating fruits (bananas, strawberries, etc) but never got any better than a gummy consistency no matter how long i left it in. lots of humidity where i live so i decided to try freeze drying instead
there is a smaller unit for around $2400 at harvest right and then the bigger ones go up in price.
like i said earlier, we did a lot of canning and found that around 50% of the nutrition is compromised due to the heating...pressure canning uses pressure to go beyond 212 degrees to ensure bacteria are killed. boiling water will never get past 212 degrees since it is evaporating off...with a pressure cooker, the temp can go beyond 212 degrees and kill bacteria...and unfortunately a good bit of the nutes as well. freeze drying preserves around 96% of the nutrients, so that is a huge plus. you can pretty much freeze dry anything except foods with high fats and sugars. chocolate doesnt freeze dry well for example.

basically the freeze dry unit will freeze the food to -30 degrees F and then start to warm the food as it uses a vacuum pump to lower the atmospheric pressure and evaporate the moisture out of the food by sublimation. this process pulls out the moisture without distorting the item. a dehydrated strawberry will shrink and look weird while a freeze dried strawberry will look unchanged except that it is 100% dry and is very light and crunchy.

i think its a great thing to get into and once you buy the equipment, there isnt much else to buy in the future except some mylar bags. most importantly, me freeze drying food means less time in the kitchen for the wife...so you know she supported this wholeheartedly...

 

[socal66]

i tried dehydrating fruits (bananas, strawberries, etc) but never got any better than a gummy consistency no matter how long i left it in. lots of humidity where i live so i decided to try freeze drying instead
there is a smaller unit for around $2400 at harvest right and then the bigger ones go up in price.
like i said earlier, we did a lot of canning and found that around 50% of the nutrition is compromised due to the heating...pressure canning uses pressure to go beyond 212 degrees to ensure bacteria are killed. boiling water will never get past 212 degrees since it is evaporating off...with a pressure cooker, the temp can go beyond 212 degrees and kill bacteria...and unfortunately a good bit of the nutes as well. freeze drying preserves around 96% of the nutrients, so that is a huge plus. you can pretty much freeze dry anything except foods with high fats and sugars. chocolate doesnt freeze dry well for example.

basically the freeze dry unit will freeze the food to -30 degrees F and then start to warm the food as it uses a vacuum pump to lower the atmospheric pressure and evaporate the moisture out of the food by sublimation. this process pulls out the moisture without distorting the item. a dehydrated strawberry will shrink and look weird while a freeze dried strawberry will look unchanged except that it is 100% dry and is very light and crunchy.

i think its a great thing to get into and once you buy the equipment, there isnt much else to buy in the future except some mylar bags. most importantly, me freeze drying food means less time in the kitchen for the wife...so you know she supported this wholeheartedly...

How foolproof and easy have you found the process so far? How do you know that you did a drying session correctly and the food will not unexpectedly spoil?

Have you dried meats with success? Can you do a cut of steak or is that where the fat When you are ready to use a dried food item is it as simple as adding water to it and letting it get moisture again?

so many questions…

 

[grubworm]

How foolproof and easy have you found the process so far? How do you know that you did a drying session correctly and the food will not unexpectedly spoil?

Have you dried meats with success? Can you do a cut of steak or is that where the fat When you are ready to use a dried food item is it as simple as adding water to it and letting it get moisture again?

so many questions…

still relatively new to this...but the machine i got is the newest version which has really good software. apparently this machine pretty much runs itself. basically i start the unit and it takes 15 minutes to start cooling before loading the trays in it. during that 15 minutes, im loading stuff onto the trays and getting it all organized and then when 15 min is up...open the door and put in the trays full of food and close the door and hit continue and it does its thing. after the cycle is complete, you can open the door and check the batch and make sure its dry and not cold. one guy i watch on youtube has a moisture meter he uses, but most people go by feel. if it feels really dry and crumbles when you mash it...its dry. if not, you shove the trays back in and run it an extra 2 hrs and then check again. it is easy.

i was looking online at freeze dried food for sale and one company, which stated that they are also a govt contractor, has freeze dried food you can buy in bulk. the pricing is insane...5oz of chicken was over $40 and 1.5oz of mushrooms were $20 and so on. of course the 1.5 oz of mushrooms end up going back to 10 oz after reconstituting them, but still...
i can get the 10 oz pack of shrooms at walmart for $2.50 and running an entire cycle with 6 full trays is about $3 in electricity...so for around $35, i would load all 6 trays and get about $240 worth of freeze dried shrooms if going off that companies pricing. im not doing it to save money or to make money, i retired 10 yrs ago when i was 46, so i just like doing crazy stuff like this for fun...stuff i didnt have time to mess with back when i was working all the time. the overlanding/traveling thing is great fun for the wife and i and we both like incorporating stuff like this into it.

as far as the steak goes...here is a link to the guy on youtube i watch and he did an excellent job explaining freeze dried steaks. if you are interested in this, check out his channel and always feel free to ask me questions. i love learning stuff like this so im jumping in with both feet

 

[grubworm]

been running the machine non-stop all week and getting some excellent results. did a bunch of sweet onions that came out great and even powered some to make onion powder for cooking. WAY better than store bought powdered onion and ran batches of candies to take camping and dried eggs, etc...
while a freeze dryer isn't an overland piece of gear i can bolt to my truck like a hi-lift...it does serve a great purpose in dealing with food storage on trips...especially long trips boondocking where i wont have a lot of freezer space for food and it is so simple to make custom MREs with this and i am REALLY digging this piece of gear...

looks like im pretty much the only one interested in this, so no need droning on about it. if any of y'all ever run across a freeze dryer and are deciding whether or not to get it...i'll just say that you would probably end up using it a lot more than you would think, and for camping and travel, its more of a game changer than i imagined...and anyone who knows me knows i have a huge imagination...

 

[freak4life]

been running the machine non-stop all week and getting some excellent results. did a bunch of sweet onions that came out great and even powered some to make onion powder for cooking. WAY better than store bought powdered onion and ran batches of candies to take camping and dried eggs, etc...
while a freeze dryer isn't an overland piece of gear i can bolt to my truck like a hi-lift...it does serve a great purpose in dealing with food storage on trips...especially long trips boondocking where i wont have a lot of freezer space for food and it is so simple to make custom MREs with this and i am REALLY digging this piece of gear...

looks like im pretty much the only one interested in this, so no need droning on about it. if any of y'all ever run across a freeze dryer and are deciding whether or not to get it...i'll just say that you would probably end up using it a lot more than you would think, and for camping and travel, its more of a game changer than i imagined...and anyone who knows me knows i have a huge imagination...

I enjoyed your postings. Just because there are not a lot of responses doesn’t mean no one is reading. I’m looking into doing this also, just need a purchasing order approved. Thanks for the thread.
Rich

 

[grubworm]

I enjoyed your postings. Just because there are not a lot of responses doesn’t mean no one is reading. I’m looking into doing this also, just need a purchasing order approved. Thanks for the thread.
Rich

thanks...good to hear
yeah, i didnt think about folk that are interested and getting information from reading the posts but just dont really have anything to add at the moment. i'll keep posting then and hopefully something i post will be of benefit to someone either now or down the road...
i was surprised how popular freeze dried candies are...even amazon is selling it. i did a batch and it did turn out crazy good. i dont like skittles...but they are awesome when freeze dried. even a jolly rancher changes texture and taste. here are skittles freeze dried and a jolly rancher. they turn into a puffy crunchy candy a lot lot a cheetos in texture and weight. i gave some to neighbors and they loved them. the hard jolly rancher actually puffed up into a ball that feels like dried spray foam
we are coming up with some really different ideas for hiking snacks, so ill post those in case anyone can use the info later



currently running a batch of 120 eggs. spent less than $20 on 120 eggs and saw where mountain house has a pouch of scrambled eggs for $8.00-9.00 for one serving. didnt say how many eggs were a "serving", but even at 3 eggs as a single serving, that is 40 pouches worth im drying right now for $20 and another $3 in electricity. not bad.
here's 6 trays of eggs. scramble them first and then pour them into the tray to pre-freeze (dont have to do this step, but it speeds things up in the freeze dryer) so thats 20 eggs per tray and when done drying, i'll weigh the tray and divide by 20 and that will be how much i'll need to equal one egg. ill run this in a blender after to powder it up really well and then all i have to do is add water later on when i need eggs.


now in all fairness...the pouch of mountain house eggs were pre-cooked and all you have to do is heat water and add to the pouch and its ready to eat. there is that extra step of cooking, but i can also easily scramble 2 dozen eggs and have them cooked in under 10 minutes and then freeze them that way so all i have to do is add water and eat out of the pouch. i already freeze dried onions and bell pepper, so i can drop some of that in the pouch as well before sealing. still pretty cheap and easy...

 

[freak4life]

Are you going to or have you already tried a complete meal, say a casserole or a spaghetti dinner?
I’m thinking that when out camping the convenience would be awesome. I’m looking forward to hearing about how things turn out.

 

[grubworm]

Are you going to or have you already tried a complete meal, say a casserole or a spaghetti dinner?
I’m thinking that when out camping the convenience would be awesome. I’m looking forward to hearing about how things turn out.

definitely will be doing complete meals here soon. the wife and step-daughter keep giving me weird stuff to freeze dry (candy and junk of course) but once they get that out of their system, i'll be getting to meats.
beans, rice, pasta and stuff like that are easy...i will need to practice a little on meats. mainly i want to marinate the chicken to give it flavor, so i'll be figuring that out. you can freeze dry raw meat real easily, but then you have to reconstitute it and then cook it...i want to cook it first so that i can pouch it like an MRE.
the wife is cajun and a crazy good cook...everyone in her family goes to her for her red beans and rice, so that has already been decided to be one freeze dried meal for camping. i also have my dish of SPAM, rice, blackeyed peas and rotel. i'm drying a tray of that to see how well it does and then we are going to do spaghetti and meat sauce and a potato with ham casserole and then try some chicken and rice and chicken and pasta dishes.
these freeze dryers are set up really well...mine is the large, so it has 6 trays that are 9"x21" each and there are dividers that can divide the tray up into different sizes so you automatically have individual freeze dried portions of equal size to go into mylar bags right after drying. there are also silicone molds where you can take fruit and blend it and pour it in the molds and make freeze dried fruit bites and stuff like that. people are freeze drying yogurt, ice cream, jello...all sorts of things.
but yeah...after venturing off into the weird stuff here at first, i will be jumping on those meals.
i saw a video where a guy freeze dried pickle slices and ate them as chips and said they were super good. also saw people freeze dry okra and other veggies and ate them as chips. thats not a bad snack for camping

 

[Kent R]

I look forward to hearing more about this process, we have a family that comes to our local meet up that has been doing this for a couple of years with huge success. I was a tractor supply the other day and they had one on display, the only thing that will keep me out of it is cost.

Thanks for starting this conversation!

 

[ZombieCat]

Are you going to or have you already tried a complete meal, say a casserole or a spaghetti dinner?
I’m thinking that when out camping the convenience would be awesome. I’m looking forward to hearing about how things turn out.

I used to make dehydrated meals for backpacking. It’s a bit more rudimentary and less costly than the sophisticated process @grubworm is using. However, i believe his will have a longer shelf life than mine, which were made for specific trips.
I made spaghetti, chili mac, fruit such as apple and banana chips, eggs, etc. which I preserved in food saver bags. Yes, you have to cook the meal first, then spread it out on parchment paper to dry. It’s a lot of effort, but you can make better tasting and a wider variety of meals. I have a nearly 20 year old 9-tray Excalibur that I still use to make fruit snacks for hiking.

 

[grubworm]

I look forward to hearing more about this process, we have a family that comes to our local meet up that has been doing this for a couple of years with huge success. I was a tractor supply the other day and they had one on display, the only thing that will keep me out of it is cost.

Thanks for starting this conversation!

yeah, this is a bit spendy getting into it initially, but some folk do sell the candies and make decent profit to offset the cost. the wife is an artist, so we end up going to a lot of art shows and stuff in baton rouge and last time we went, someone had a kiosk selling freeze dried skittles and other candies. the wife bought a 2oz pouch of freeze dried skittles for $6...thats $3 per ounce and i just bought bulk skittles at sams for around $0.39 an ounce. the unit has 6 trays and 2 trays of freeze dried skittles filled up 4-5 large mason jars, probably about $300+ worth if sold at the kiosk prices, so there is potential for the machine to earn its keep that way. not to go off into a rabbit hole, but i know that in louisiana, you can make candies and stuff like this and sell it publicly as long as you dont exceed $30K a year and you have a label on the product stating that it was packaged in a non-inspected kitchen. i'm sure most states have similar rules, so it really might be easier than you'd think to be able to sell freeze dried items to the public.

we are really good friends with a couple that owns a giant antique mall in downtown baton rouge. the wife sells her paintings and pottery there and i ended up turning a lot of wooden bowls for them to sell. i got into woodturning as a hobby and gave my bowls away for free. garrett (antique mall owner) got one and liked it and then somehow i ended up selling all i could make thru his shop. i gave them some of the candy and now they are wanting me to make all sorts of different freeze dried stuff for them to sell.
i didnt get into this to make money, so after talking with the wife about it...i'll probably get a 2nd unit and let her go do that and i'll just focus on my MREs and real food for us.
but yeah, i think if someone wanted to get a freeze dryer for personal use but didnt feel the cost was justified for that...there is a very good possibility of making enough money on the side for it to pay for itself and maybe even more...

 

[grubworm]

I used to make dehydrated meals for backpacking. It’s a bit more rudimentary and less costly than the sophisticated process @grubworm is using. However, i believe his will have a longer shelf life than mine, which were made for specific trips.
I made spaghetti, chili mac, fruit such as apple and banana chips, eggs, etc. which I preserved in food saver bags. Yes, you have to cook the meal first, then spread it out on parchment paper to dry. It’s a lot of effort, but you can make better tasting and a wider variety of meals. I have a nearly 20 year old 9-tray Excalibur that I still use to make fruit snacks for hiking.

sounds like pretty much everything you made could easily go into a freeze dryer...
some things are better dehydrated rather than freeze dried. jerky comes to mind. you cant make jerky in a freeze dryer or things like fruit roll ups...things like that definitely need to be dehydrated.
20 years on a dehydrator is very impressive...not sure how long a freeze dryer will last

 

[FishinCrzy]

Homemade MREs, camping meals, and even freeze-dried candy are all worth trying. Don't worry about Spam being too fatty, give it a shot anyway.

I think there is enough sodium in SPAM to preserve it on the countertop for a few months. Freeze drying should increase that!

 

[grubworm]

ha! well, this is interesting...
the wife and her friends and family are all over the freeze drying candy and weird stuff, so i just bought a 2nd unit today for her to have her own to play with and that way i can get back to my actual meal stuff.

there is an extra large size that is all stainless steel, so i bought that for me and she can have the one i just bought.


i ran the batch of 120 eggs and they turned out amazing and i still like the freeze dried eggs better than fresh out of the shell, the texture is different and the taste seems better. some people say that freeze drying certain foods actually enhances the flavor and i totally believe that. i added some of the freeze dried onion and bell pepper i did the other day and it made a delicious omlet.
between the canning and freeze drying...there really isnt that much refrigerated stuff i'll be taking on camp trips now. guess one dometic chest will be a spare and the other just for cold drinks. kind of nice not having perishable items along...always something gets left to rot at the bottom and the tomatoes ALWAYS seem to find their way getting mashed under something.

 

[grubworm]

damn...this is getting easy. found actual MRE pouches (on amazon of course) that are the 7 mil mylar and can take boiling water. i was using the thinner mylar and transferring the contents to a bowl and then adding water to reconstitute, but these pouches are the ones you can add hot water to and eat right out of the pouch. THIS is what i was shooting for when doing the camp meals. not every meal will be a single serving pouch and i found a great hack for that, too...

i use a vacuum sealer a lot and regular vacuum seal bags are not made to store food for the 25+ years you can get from a mylar bag. mylar is a thin aluminium sheet bonded to the polybag and that is what preserves the food so well and keeps heat in when reconstituting...think of the emergency mylar blankets. apparently oxygen can get into any freezer/vacuum bag over time, but with the mylar, it keeps 100% of the oxygen out for many many years...
well...i can make a meal like beef stew and freeze dry it and stick a portion in a vacuum seal bag and pull all the air out. i can then take a freeze dried dessert and vacuum seal it in another bag and so on and so on and then take those smaller bags and put them in a large mylar bag and i now have a 25+ year shelf life for the contents.
i even found the MRE heating packs (yeah...amazon again...) so that i can make actual MREs that make their own heat, so i can have some of those around for when heating water by stove is not an option for whatever reason.

TOTALLY digging this. like i had said earlier, i got my first taste of freeze dried/dehydrated food being on submarines where any fresh food was gone the first week or so of deployment and then rest of the trip was the weird food. i remember watching a cook take a small green hockey puck and toss it in a pan of water. a few minutes later, the pan was full of green beans. i hate canned green beans, but these dehydrated ones tasted good to me and they were also fun to watch puff up like those compressed sponges you add water to and they puff up to 50X their size. being underwater for months at a time...watching dehydrated green beans puff up was prime entertainment...well, that and the times i'd sneak around on the sub with a tube of super glue...watching an officer thrash around as his hand is glued to a handrail never got old!

i also spent quite a few years in the gulf and overseas working off of any boat/ship/oil rig imaginable. some were great with really good food and some were pretty nasty, only to be outdone by the nastiness of the food they served us. i cant even imagine how much more tolerable some of those jobs would have been if i had a freeze dryer back then and could toss some freeze dried snacks and stuff in my duffle bag.

guess i get a good bit of my inspiration from being in remote areas with limited or just gross food available. i also realize that most foods that we can take camping, etc are heavily processed and have a lot of chemicals and preservatives added. the freeze drying just checks a lot of boxes for me and like i mentioned earlier...even the wife is taking to this and wanting to get into the freeze dried candies and snacks. its also a fun thing for us and when we are not on the road, this is a great thing to do and it goes right along with the "overlanding" and being self sufficient thing. im not a prepper...but i do like being prepared for things and food is a necessity, so thats a couple more boxes this checks off...