When you are putting together your food storage, you might wonder what the difference is between freeze dried foods and dehydrated food. Here we will discuss how to freeze dry your own food.
Freeze dried foods are flash frozen and then dried. Freeze drying removes the water, not the flavor.
So freeze dried foods retain virtually all their fresh food taste, vitamins and nutritional content. It also weighs less than fresh.
Freeze dried foods have 98% of their water removed. This significantly reduces the food's weight, making it easier to handle and less costly to transport.
Dehydrated Foods are top-quality foods, that have been picked at their ripeness, cleansed and trimmed to leave only the best parts. These choice foods are then dehydrated were 98% of their moisture is removed.
This is done by a highly sophisticated drying process. They are then packed in heavy-duty enameled cans, and sealed with a special inert atmosphere to ensure the longest possible storage life.
Yet drying does not affect the nutritional value of these foods. Dehydrated foods retain their nutritional value because the vitamins have not been cooked out in the original process.
The water, pits, and peelings have been removed and you pay only for the product, not excessive or unnecessary waste material. Because their bulk and weight have been greatly reduced, dehydrated foods are more compact and convenient for storing and require very little space.
They offer quick mobility in the event of an evacuation alert. For example, one case of regular canned food weighs approximately 24 pounds. The same item of dehydrated foods would weigh from 36 to 45 ounces, and would be packed in just one #10 can.
Dehydrated foods have approximately double the yield of regular canned foods even though their cost is much lower. In commercial freeze drying, foods are flash frozen and dried in a vacuum to convert internal moisture from a solid to a gas without passing through the liquid state.
This process preserves nutrients in the food and makes it hard to tell the difference between a fresh meal and a freeze-dried one that's been rehydrated. Although it's too expensive and impractical to duplicate this process in your home, you can get a similar result with your freezer and a vacuum sealer.
Here are some simple steps to freeze drying your own fruits and veggies. You will need, disposable roasting tins, an awl or ice pick, a cutting board, sharp kitchen knife, paper towels, a freezer, a vacuum sealer with a roll of bags.
First you need to make drying trays. Use an awl or ice pick to puncture the bottom, sides and top of disposable roasting trays.
The hole spacing should be a quarter inch or less so that your tins look like a screen. This will circulate the air evenly so your produce dries out quickly. If you have cake cooling racks or metal mesh trays, you can use them as well.
Prep your produce. Wash, peel and slice your produce, making sure to remove the pith (soft spongy center), core and any bad parts. You'll need very fine slices that have a thickness that's a quarter inch or less. Leave your citrus fruits in wedges and your berries whole but any broccoli or cauliflower clusters shouldn't be bigger than your index finger. Pat your prepped produce dry with some paper towels.
Load up your produce. Arrange the produce on your roasting trays or cooling racks so that it fills up the space without contact between the slices.
Fill all the trays in the same way before putting the lids back on, but don't put different fruits and vegetables on the same tray. You can stack the roasting tins in your freezer since the holes will allow air to pass through them. Adjust your freezer's temperature to its maximum.
Test your produce. After three weeks have passed, take a sample from each tin or rack and see if it darkens. If it does, your produce isn't dry and you should leave it in for a few more weeks. When you can remove samples from the freezer without a change in color, your produce is ready.
Seal your produce. Get out your vacuum sealer and pull on the roll of bags until you have a section that's three inches larger than the produce you'll be sealing.
Cut off this section and put an end in the sealer, then press the button to seal it. Now fill the bag with your produce and put the open end in the sealer. Press the button again to suck the air out of the bag and seal the open end.
Author Resource:-
Terry Daniels is an accomplished expert in family preparedness and has been giving seminars for over 15 years. He recommendsFreeze Dried Foods to be included in your emergency food storage.
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