Freeze-Drying Sliced Celery and Rhubarb

August 26, 2023 Sarah

Celery and rhubarb might seem like odd choices to freeze-dry in our Harvest Right Freeze-Dryer. But hear me out here. Both are underrated ingredients to be used. Freeze-dried celery can be crumbled into small dices, and added to many meals for a boost of green. Rhubarb can be made into a tart sauce, to have over pancakes, in just a few minutes.

And let’s be honest…..I grow both really well on our homestead. The cool start to the 2023 growing season had both growing well. I harvested an entire work table of celery in July. I never need a lot of it at any point in the kitchen, even at Thanksgiving. Just here and there I need a stalk or two, in both trail recipes and at home cooking. So why not preserve it? Now I have a year’s worth that I can use as needed, with no waste.

Celery:

Trim the bundles of celery, removing the top part with leaves, setting aside. I cut the bottom off, then put all the stalks of celery in a sink of cold water to wash any soil off. The upper parts I had cut off I pulled the leaves off and then tossed those tiny “stalks” in as well.

Should you like celery leaves, those can be washed, spun dry in a lettuce spinner. They can then be dehydrated in a food dehydrator. It will only take 1-2 hours for that to happen. They are great to add to stuffing come the holidays.

Drain the celery stalks, shop into thin slices.

Lay flat on cookie trays, and put in the freezer till frozen. At that point I transfer to bags, and wait till I have enough frozen to do a run in our Large Harvest Right freeze-dryer.

Rhubarb:

Trim off the leaf, it it has it attached, trim off the bottom end if need be. Wash in a sink full of cold water, to remove any dirt on them.

Drain the stalks, chop into thin wedges.

Lay flat on cookie trays, and put in the freezer till frozen. At that point I transfer to bags, and wait till I have enough frozen to do a run in our Large Harvest Right freeze-dryer.

For Both:

Spread in freeze-dryer trays, filling the trays well. We added an extra 12 hours to the dry time, as I have found items like this need more time. As in produce that has ribs. It hides the moisture well, deep inside. So just start off with extra time to be sure.

Once fully dry, remove and bag up immediately, adding in an oxygen absorber packet in each bag. Seal fully. Mark what is in the bag, and what day you did it on.

~Sarah

Freeze Drying · Prepping · Preserving · Recipes

Freeze-Drying versus Dehydrating: Frozen Peas and Corn

November 16, 2022 Sarah

We have been running comparisons with Freeze-Drying versus Dehydrating with various ingredients, to see what the outcome is. This has meant that we are running both our Harvest Right freeze-dryer and our dehydrator running nearly non-stop of late. We have the large size Harvest Right freeze-dryer for reference.

This post is on drying frozen petite peas and sweet corn. Both are blanched, so pre-cooked. It’s as easy as taking a bag out of the freezer and processing it. No hard work doing any prep this time.

Freeze-dried on the left, dehydrated on the right.

Dehydrated on the left, freeze-dried on the right.

Now then….what is the actual difference between dehydrating it, versus freeze-drying it? In each method I weighed out the frozen product in both ounces/pounds and grams, measured it in cups, and then after cooking it, and then after it was dried.

Dehydrating Frozen Green Peas:

Frozen weight – 16 ounces / 454 grams
Frozen measurement – 3¾ cups
Dehydrated weight – 3.2 ounces / 90 grams
Dehydrated measurement – ¾ cup + 2 Tbsp

Placed on 3 dehydrator trays, dried at 153° for about 4 hours, till fully dry. Let cool on counter, then weighed and packaged up.

Freeze-drying Frozen Green Peas:

Frozen weight – 16 ounces / 454 grams
Frozen measurement – 3¾ cups
Dehydrated weight – 2.9 ounces / 82 grams
Dehydrated measurement – 2¼ cups freeze-dried

Place frozen on freeze-dryer trays, lined with silicone mats. Put into the machine, which was set on the pre-freeze mode. Took 18 hours 36 minutes to run batch. Processed immediately upon being done, into glass mason jar and sealed to remove air.

Dehydrating Frozen Corn:

Frozen weight – 16 ounces / 454 grams
Frozen measurement – 3 cups
Dehydrated weight – 4.9 ounces / 137 grams
Dehydrated measurement – 1¼ cups

Placed on 3 dehydrator trays, dried at 153° for about 4 hours, till fully dry. Let cool on counter, then weighed and packaged up.

Freeze-drying Frozen Corn:

Frozen weight – 16 ounces / 454 grams
Frozen measurement – 3 cups
Dehydrated weight – 4 ounces / 113 grams
Dehydrated measurement – 2 cups freeze-dried

Rehydrating:

We broke down the weight to what was ¼ pound when fresh. This way it was equal even though the size of the product wasn’t. We weighed by grams, converted to ounces, and then measured in a dry measuring cup.

Freeze-dried on the left, dehydrated on the right. As you can see, the dehydrated is much smaller in appearance. The color gets more intense as well.

However, you can only eat the freeze-dried in a dry state. The dehydrated needs to be soaked to be edible.

Freeze-dried on the left, dehydrated on the right.

Each item was weighed and measured out into a bowl. I covered each item with boiled water, stirred it, and covered it for 10 minutes. Checked for visual appearance, and taste/texture. Then let sit for another 5 minutes, for a total of 15 minutes.

Dehydrated Peas – 1.2 ounces dry equals 4 ounces fresh.
Freeze-dried Peas – 0.7 ounces dry equals 4 ounces fresh.
Dehydrated Corn – 1.2 ounces dry equals 4 ounces fresh.
Freeze-dried Corn – 1.0 ounce dry equals 4 ounces fresh.

Dehydrated left, freeze-dried right.

Both were tasty, but the dehydrated had some issues. About half the peas were perfect looking, but others were still small, as if their cells had collapsed. Still tasty, but would shine best in a soup.

Dehydrated left, freeze-dried right.

The freeze-dried are plump and look no different than before they were dried. The dehydrated though, have the look of dent corn, and while they taste good, they are just too chewy.

The Takeaway:

Dehydrating is the fastest way.
Dehydrating is the cheapest way.
Dehydrating frozen (cooked) vegetables leaves the final product very small. In the case of the peas, nearly 3 cups of water was dehydrated away.
The color of dehydrated gets more intense than freeze-dried (which often the color becomes very light when dry).
Freeze-drying preserves the size of the vegetable. It will be usually about the same size as when frozen.
Freeze-dried allows immediate eating, as a crunchy snack.
Dehydrating requires soaking to be edible for vegetables.
Freeze-dried rehydrated 1/3 faster than dehydrated.
The texture of both the peas and corn when dehydrated is “leathery”. This has always been an issue as long as people have been drying food for the outdoors and storage. When I first started writing backpacking recipes long ago, green peas were one of the few splurges I did for freeze-dried. If the dehydrated food isn’t fully hydrated, your stomach will grind on it. It’s why I use dehydrated veggies usually only in soups and stews, where it has a long time to plump up.
For long-term storage, if properly sealed, freeze-dried can last up to 25 years. Dehydrated is 1 to 2 years for storage. It will often become tougher and harder to rehydrate as it ages.

The Winner:

Freeze-drying wins with frozen vegetables. Yes, it is not the cheapest, nor the fastest method. But it produces a far superior product. Eating freeze-dried green peas is a real treat. They are crunchy, airy, and sweet as can be. They can be enjoyed as a snack, and as an ingredient in so many meals.

FTC Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased. These items are what we used in the recipe/method above.

~Sarah

Freeze Drying · Prepping · Preserving · Recipes

Freeze-Drying versus Dehydrating: Egg Noodles

November 15, 2022 Sarah

One of the things you cannot buy easily (even online) is “instant pasta” – outside of using ramen noodles and small couscous. Neither of these are a 1:1 substitute for actual pasta. You know it isn’t the same when you go to eat it, no matter how much the PR for couscous will tell you “It’s pasta!”. Enjoy ramen and couscous in recipes for them, and have fun prepping and storing “instant” pasta for your recipes. It’s FBC (Freezer Bag Cooking) friendly and saves a lot of time cooking on trail, no large pot needed, no messy starchy water that boils over, and as well, you use a lot less water making your meal (if you are cooking for 2 people a 2 liter pot is a must, and so is using 6 cups of water for uncooked pasta). Just boil water, soak the pre-cooked pasta and you are good to go.

You can add these “instant” noodles to soups and they will rehydrate in the broth (great if you have a too thin soup!) or soak in hot water and add to recipes. Both methods of dehydrating and freeze-drying will produce a similar product in the end.

1 pound of uncooked raw extra wide egg noodles. Bought in bulk at a US Foods Chef’s Store (used to be known as Cash & Carry), which is a restaurant supply store. We buy the noodles in 10 pound boxes. They also sell them in 5 pound bags.

– And let me say this: If you have a child who is a picky eater or has sensory issues with food, and they live off of buttered noodles with 4 shakes of Parmesan cheese, I highly encourage you to have a LOT of this in your prepper pantry. Anytime you have an emergency (power outage, weather, earthquake, and so on) the stress level of children gets bad. If you can serve them food that is a comfort food, so much the better. Happy children leads to parents with a lot less anxiety to deal with.

Now then….what is the actual difference between dehydrating it, versus freeze-drying it? In each method I weighed out the uncooked product in both ounces/pounds and grams, and then after cooking it, and then after it was dried, as well as before rehydrating and after it.

For best results cook the pasta for the shortest time on the package. Make sure you rinse the cooked pasta very well, with cold tap water, shaking it well while doing it. You want to remove the starch off of it and to stop the cooking. The pasta will finish cooking upon rehydration.

Work quickly and don’t let the cooked pasta sit in the colander longer than needed, as it will start clumping up. Wearing disposable gloves (food grade) helps you break up clumps quickly, and keeps the food clean. No sticking to your fingers.

A small digital scale was used for the weighing.

Dehydrating Egg Noodles:

Dry uncooked weight – 16 ounces / 454 grams
Cooked and drained – 2.26 pounds / 980 grams
Dehydrated weight – 13.8 ounces / 391 grams

Boiled large pot unsalted water, cooked extra wide egg noodles for 6 minutes (shortest time on package). Drained, and rinsed well with cold water, shaking off well.

Placed on 3 dehydrator trays, dried at 153° for about 6 hours, till fully dry. Let cool on counter, then weighed and packaged up.

Rehydration:

1 cup dried noodles ( 1.5 ounces/ 43 grams)

Add 1 cup boiling water, cover and let rehydrate for 15 minutes.

Rehydrated weight: 3.9 ounces/ 109 grams

Rehydrated and ready to eat.

Freeze-drying Egg Noodles:

Dry uncooked weight – 16 ounces / 454 grams
Cooked and drained – 2.23 pounds / 972 grams
Dehydrated weight – 13.2 ounces / 375 grams

Boiled large pot unsalted water, cooked extra wide egg noodles for 6 minutes (shortest time on package). Drained, and rinsed well with cold water, shaking off well.

Spread out onto 2 parchment paper lined rimmed baking sheets in a single layer, froze fully in freezer.

Transferred to freeze-dryer trays, lined with the silicone mats you can add (or use parchment paper cut to fit). Put into the machine, which was set on the pre-freeze mode.

Freeze-drying time was 18 hours 36 minutes for the run (we also did peas and corn alongside).

Rehydration:

1 cup freeze-dried noodles ( 3 ounces / 34 grams)

Add 1 cup boiling water, cover and let rehydrate for 10 to 15 minutes.

Rehydrated weight: 3 ounces / 85 grams

Rehydrated and ready to eat.

Side by side. Dehydrated on the left, freeze-dried on the right.

The Takeaway:

Both methods produced a usable and good quality product.
Both are perfectly tasty, and both rehydrate great.
The dehydrator wins in time, in just a third of the time of the freeze-dryer.
Weight-wise the freeze-dried wins by just .4 of an ounce.
Size-wise though, the dehydrated takes up a lot less room. The freeze-dried pasta is full size. So if space is a concern, then dehydrated wins.
The freeze-dried does rehydrate quicker. It only needed 10 minutes (I checked and tasted both at 10 minutes in). The dehydrated really needed all 15 minutes (though you could soak and add to a meal, such as chicken noodle soup, and it would continue rehydrating).
The freeze-dried noodles can be dropped right in a soup with no presoaking and will rehydrate quickly in a boiling broth. The dehydrated ones need to be presoaked.
The freeze-dried noodles are lighter in color and have a different texture when in dry state. They would be far easier to crush than the dehydrated ones.
If properly stored, the freeze-dried noodles can be stored for up to 25 years (sealed air tight). The dehydrated should be used up within 1-2 years max.

Is There A Winner?

That’s a hard one to quantify, to be honest. Both are good, in their own way. I would say the freeze-dried egg noodles come back in appearance and chew of the freshly cooked the best. But in this case, it’s still pretty close in who wins.

For many, it will come down to cost – a dehydrator is affordable compared to a freeze-dryer. It also takes a lot less space.

But what can I say…a home freeze-dryer is just so much fun.

FTC Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased. These items are what we used in the recipe/method above.

~Sarah

Freeze Drying · Homesteading · Prepping · Preserving

We Bought A Freeze-Dryer For Our Homestead

November 14, 2022April 11, 2024 Sarah

When at home Harvest Right freeze-dryer units started showing up a few years back I really questioned if it was worth buying one. I’d think to myself “for the initial cost we could buy a lot of already freeze-dried food“. I said that over and over.

I wasn’t wrong though for thinking that. A freeze-dryer is an actual investment. It’s not like buying a dehydrator for your counter, where you might spend $65 to $500 dollars. Instead, to get a freeze-dryer unit, it is thousands of dollars. That might sound like a humble brag, and it’s not meant to be one. We saved up, using money the business made, to invest into it. But even with that, it was hard for me to sign off on getting it. Dropping nearly $4,000 is a lot of money (we bought an extra set trays, tray covers for the freezer and silicone liners for the trays. Then you add in extra oil, oxygen absorbers, mylar bags….and you really start wondering if it was the right choice!)

A couple months ago, after a very long wait (we ordered right when they were backed up with orders), our machine showed up. We purchased the Large unit, knowing we would easily fill all the trays to run a batch.

Now here’s something to ponder. The units are not small. They come very well packed. We live rural, on a country road. This particular FedEx driver would not back up our long driveway (many 18 wheelers have to drop off farm equipment). It was good we had a tractor with fork lift tines, as Kirk had to get it off the back of the truck and take it up the road. If you live in town, they dump the pallet the unit is on in your driveway. You will need a couple helpers to get it into your garage or house. Especially if it is raining. So keep that in mind when they call you for delivery.

Finally we got it set up. If you buy the Small or Medium unit, it’s a simple plug into the wall and go. The Large unit requires 110 volt (NEMA 5-20) outlet and a dedicated 20 amp circuit is required. For us, this came down to Kirk having time to install that on the panel. If you are not handy with that, you will need to get an electrician out to do it. So the smaller sizes will be far friendlier for those who don’t want to mess around.

We had to run an update before starting (the update has the fabled candy setting).

They suggest you do a first run of bread or something cheap. Ironically I had found chopped fresh broccoli that week, and it was cheaper to use that than bread. This first run you toss. Then the gates are wide open.

A suggestion though: Don’t jump into the deep end. Learn the basics first. We did a lot of fresh vegetables, trying to get the homestead harvest processed.

For these we didn’t pre-freeze. We let the machine do the work. It takes a lot less time if it goes in pre-frozen. We hadn’t gotten the tray covers yet – I HIGHLY recommend them. Then you can stack the filled trays in the freezer and be ready to go. This changed our efficiency.

Freeze-dried broccoli.

The computer screen walks you through.

Close-up of the products freezing.

It’s done. Or at least you hope it is. Sometimes it has to go back in for a bit longer, but most times the machine senses it right.

We do our research online for each new item, and look at what others are saying about dry times, does it need more time from the start. Usually we hedge it’ll be 24 hours or more for a batch to go through. Candy as noted down below goes quickly, and is only a couple of hours.

How do we store our freeze-dried food after it is finished?

We split it up.

Some of it will fill 1 quart mason jar, wide mouth preferably. We add an oxygen absorber to each jar. Then we vacuum seal the jars to ensure it stays fresh (see below for the sealer we use).

The rest we pack into mylar bags with an oxygen absorber, then we seal the bags using an Avid Armor Ultra Series Model USV32 Chamber Vacuum Sealer.

Carrots, these were sliced thin.

Sliced green bell peppers.

Now where it gets really easy is finding frozen vegetables on sales. We can get 5 pound bags for around $5 at the restaurant supply store. Frozen vegetables are blanched, so pre-cooked. Spread on thickly, and pop in frozen. It takes minutes to do.

And the product is exactly the same as the ones you buy commercially freeze-dried. We did petite sweet peas, which are so good to just munch on.

Sweet corn, blanched and frozen.

Long green beans, blanched and frozen.

Tri-colored carrots cut on the bias, these were blanched and frozen.

For fresh we freeze-dried many cherry tomatoes. Opinion is split on this. There are some who argue about the seeds (because yes, seeds can hamper the drying process). We put them on for extra time at the start to combat this. They came out perfect and have not changed since.

Tucked away for storage.

Chopped green bell peppers. I found chopped was a better than sliced for packing up.

Mixed vegetables, blanched and frozen.

Egg noodles, for truly “instant” pasta. They just need water to soak in – you can throw them right into soup and are ready in a few minutes.

Precooked chicken strips.

Garlic cloves.

And yes, the fabled chewy candy. They are fun to do, to just watch the candies split in front of your eyes. Candy goes quickly as it isn’t frozen like other foods.

Gummy bears…while cool to do, I’d not again. You have to get them VERY dry or they collapse overnight and become sticky again. If dry though, they are freaky to eat as they are crunchy.

Sliced olives. We bought a number 10 can and just drained/froze and then freeze-dried.

Vanilla yogurt frozen into silicone molds, then freeze-dried.

Strawberry yogurt, frozen in silicone molds, then freeze-dried.

And the trashiest snack that is far too good? Thinly sliced pumpkin pie. It’s like biscotti after. Crunchy and sweet.

So is the freeze-dryer worth it?

Yes, it is. It is fun for sure, and I can dry quite a bit for each load. Is it necessary? No. But it is far better than dehydrating for many things.

~Sarah