Freeze Drying Mandarin Oranges
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- Опубліковано 10 вер 2024
- Freeze Drying Mandarin Oranges - slices, segments and blended.
Next time I will probably blend them until smooth. On this batch, the more I blended them, the more I like them.
Using some of the puree: • Rehydrating Freeze Dri...
We don't rehydrate them as slices or segments, we eat them dry (delicious) or powder them and use them in things like drinks or cooking/baking.
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Before buying a freeze dryer, perhaps research to find out more about the downside of the machine; some people have problems with their machine and it's big and heavy and hard to return!
When trying to decide what to freeze dry you can start by asking why.
Start by asking yourself this question. Why are you freeze drying food? Knowing this should help you decide what you should freeze dry first.
I'm freeze drying because:
Just to freeze dry leftovers?
You want to make your own food for camping/backpacking?
For if/when the SHTF?
For a short term emergency?
You have your own garden and want to freeze dry the food?
You love Costco but don't have a family of 6?
You are good at finding the food sales but only have 1 freezer?
When you cook homemade chili just for yourself you make 10 gallons? Because you have 3 full freezers and are worried about power outages?
If I knew then what I know now, I would have freeze dried things in a different order. Or maybe not, because I started freeze drying because we had 3 full freezers, I was thinking of getting another one, and I decided I should buy a walk-in freezer instead. I started looking into walk-ins and realized they were expensive to buy (even used ones) AND expensive to own and operate. Then I found out Harvest Right was making home sized freeze dryers. One of my first thoughts was "I like Mountain House!" I have used their food for backpacking almost 45 years and we even kept some in our travel trailer, for just in case.
Freeze dried food will stay fresh for many years and be ready and waiting when you need it.
We do videos showing how we are using our Harvest Right Freeze Dryer to freeze dry food for long term storage. (We have the medium size machine that we got in August of 2017) We talk about how to load and unload the freeze dryer, how to know if the food is dry, is it better to freeze dry raw food or cooked food, and do a few taste tests. Freeze dried food is also great for prepping or just for camping and snacking!
Music:
No.6 In My Dreams by Esther Abrami
Night Snow by Asher Fulero
Did a tray of mandarin sections, with each section cut into thirds! Packing with my nonfat yogurt I freeze-dried for my breakfast packs! YUMMY!
That sound delicious!
Drooling watching this.
Good idea, I didn't think to stick the bag onto the fry scoop first :)
Yep! Just like scooping popcorn.
I'm a little unclear on the measurements - are you using an imperial gush, or a metric gush?
We've done cara cara oranges, navel oranges, and mandarin/tangerines (fresh fruit.) All of them turned out bitter when eaten dried- pithy, like the inner white part of the rind. I'm not sure what we are doing wrong - the fruit tastes nice and sweet fresh, but FD it's too bitter to eat.
We've done slices both ways like you have, and also whole wedges, and wedges cut in half. We'll probably try the gush method next, but if that fails I'm out of ideas. :(
Thanks for sharing!
Both imperial and metric. I forget to stay in one system and slip back and forth. Oops!
We have not experienced that with any of our oranges, except for blood oranges; they were bitter after freeze drying. But they weren't great before, either.
Hi Dan, just ran a batch of mandarins, about 7.5kg in total. How long did your batch take to finish. Mine took close to 45hours. I picked about 14kg from the yard and placed them randomly in segments, in hind sight i would probably slice them or blend them . I will probably try that with the next pickings. Take care.
I didn't record the times of most things back then, but I do remember that the whole segments can easily take 60 or even 80 hours to ensure that the centers were dry. I liked the blended one better; faster and less chance for any hidden moisture issue.
I'll be trying this method again: Rehydrating and Re-Freezing Drying of Blended oranges ua-cam.com/video/dMM-H87qqjQ/v-deo.html
@@SchoolReports Good to kn ow, this imported FD of mine is settling down a bit. I guess it doesn't have the smarts of the HR models and once you set a temp it stays locked on until the next part of the program kicks off. Definitely testing my patience but I wonder if i would buy it again from a different supplier or go down the HR route, only time will tell. Thank you again for this channel, it has helped me out heaps in "decoding" my machine.
@@thefuzzman9833 When your machine moves to its next step in the program, with a higher temperature, does the display tell you what is happening to the pressure? Does the vacuum pump keep up with the new higher levels of sublimation?
@SchoolReports the pump I have stays constant at once it jumps to stage 2. It's quite a big pump at 14 cubic feet per minute. I will have a look at some data tonight. I will extract to usb. Reminds me of our old red rattler trains lol.
Prehistoric hehe.
@@thefuzzman9833 That's good. I had thought that with your big vacuum pump it might be able to keep the pressure down as the temp goes up. It seems like the cycling pressure collapses some fruits, and maybe, occasionally, marshmallows under the right (wrong) conditions.
can you tell me where you got your scoop that fits the harvest right medium trays?
Have you ever used something long enough that you no longer give it a second thought? Well, I need to remember to mention that the scoop I use is one I "adjusted."
I bought a scoop off Amazon and then cut both sides off and attached 3D printed end pieces to the sides. This is how I changed the scoop - Food Scoop For Freeze Dryer Tray ua-cam.com/video/trs26E42Zho/v-deo.html
It could be done without a 3D printer by heating up the cut off pieces with a heat gun (could be done over a toaster or in an oven) and I was able to easily flatten them. It would then be very easy to sand them to fit the side of the scoop and glue them on.
I might give them a try, thanks. My FD got fixed and the software was updated. Now we have different menus that we weren't familiar with.
I'm' going to do more and blend it until it's smooth. The smoother it was the more I liked it.
@@SchoolReports - I did up a bunch of blueberries, strawberries, bananas and other fruits and then blended them all into powder after they were FD'd. I mixed them up later into enough smoothies to last about 5 days.
@@annwithaplan9766 That sound delicious!
What is the freeze time and dry time? Do you use the same preset freeze/dry time for everything? What times? Freeze dryer preset default time? Or what?
Sorry, I don't really know. It was citrus so I probably would have used a prefreeze of 12 hours and a final dry of 12 hours, but it had some whole segments so it had to go back in for more final dry time.
I hardly track the total times anymore because it's an almost worthless number, except the freeze time and final dry which depend mostly on food type. It's done when it's done. 99% will somewhere between 18 hours and 70 hours. I set the Freeze Time and Final Dry Times (we have an older firmware version) for every batch, depending on the food type, using the custom cycle menu. The Main Dry Cycle is automatic, with the exception of being able to skip to the end of it. (it is 30 hours, and it auto skips when it thinks it's dry enough)
Even if I load the freeze dryer the same way, with the same amount of the same food, for two consecutive batches, the total time can still be a few hours different. All I can do is generalize about total freeze dry time because there are so many variables to the dry times; type of food, water content, sugar content, temperature of the food, ambient temperature, how much food in a batch, more than one kind of food in a batch, food volume, how tight it's packed, thickness on the tray, how well it contacts the tray, how porous the food is, how the food was sliced (this made a huge difference with citrus and pineapple), how clean the vacuum oil is (if it's an oil pump), age of the pump ,and I'm sure there are more.
I've considered telling people, when asked "how long did that batch take?" that it was 32 hours. And then explain that if you adjust the conditions right, that every batch COULD be run in 32 hours. Otherwise it's kind of like asking how long does it take to go from point A to point B. The only good answer is: That depends...
@@SchoolReports very in-depth response. I very much appreciate the reply. I received mine with upgraded pump a couple months ago. I've been afraid to use it the whole time. I just did some blueberries. I don't know how long the "freeze" portion took because I went to bed. But the whole thing only ran for 9 hours?? Blueberries were not done. So I extended the dry cycle for another 12 hours. Now they're good. I'm trying raw scrambled eggs today. The machine will be done, I'm sure, in 9 hours as that seems to be the preset. I'm wondering if it's the "dry time" I should be concerned with at all!? Maybe it's the freeze time? My machine doesn't allow me to extend freeze cycle so I'm curious if I'm even doing it right. UGH!
@@yoadrienne939 Well now you've got my interest! Something doesn't seem right. If I understand you correctly, you're saying the ENTIRE process was complete in 9 hours? With blueberries? The newer firmware on the machines don't seem to allow for adding freeze time, which is the big reason I haven't upgraded. But, if it is that much faster, I may have to consider it again. I have read the owners manual for the newest machines and even there it mentions blueberries as one of the things that will take longer to dry. My blueberries always need 12 or more hours of final dry time with a total time of more than 50 hours. (The new machines firmware DOES make it go faster) Oranges, pineapple, blueberries are all slow to freeze dry. The only thing I've done that would possibly be done that fast is mini marshmallows.
Let me know how it goes with your eggs.
@@SchoolReports I will! And yes! 9 hours it seems for everything as a pre-set. It doesn't give me the option of extending "freeze time" only "drying time". But the freeze cycle is fast! Granted my blueberries are small wild frozen bagged blueberries, and I didn't have to poke holes in them (even though I purchased one of those metal meat tenderizers you featured in one of your videos) 😆 but, the additional 12 hour dry time was all it took after the initial 9 hours of total run time.
By the way, I'm a subscriber and love your videos. Thank you for them!
@@yoadrienne939 Thanks, I look forward to hearing the results!
Yes everything is pre-set/automatic with the latest firmware. Is yours version 5? (you can still adjust the final freeze time and tray temperature by using the customize button at the start) I love how automatic the new firmware is, except that the temperature probes are under the tray. If the food is a little thick or needs to freeze longer, like some kinds of ice cream, it doesn't know, and I suspect that's where some people have had problems with things puffing up and making a mess. The version 5 firmware sounds so fast that I may have to get it and find workarounds for my issues. Or see if I can have both and switch back and forth.
I failed miserably with my clementine experiment and swore I’d never try again, but you might have me reconsidering that. Thanks. 😋
I heard too much OA would be bad, is that not true?
What happened/went wrong to yours?
When I do more I'll blend it until it's smooth. The smoother it was the more I liked it. These whole segments didn't do well, but did you see our Cara Cara oranges video? It showed how much difference the way you slice them can make.
I can't even imagine how extra oxygen absorbing capacity could ever be a problem. There are no ingredients in the type we use (iron powder based) that could do anything negative. Once the oxygen is absorbed from the bag they just sit there hoping for more oxygen.
@@SchoolReports I didn’t cut my clementines, that’s why it failed so bad. They oozed and were sticky and never dried, but I didn’t know to cut them. Next time, maybe.
Someone in one of the Facebook groups said the OAs have a small amount of moisture and using too big of one would ruin the food. I really have no idea who to believe and not believe on some of this, science is a foreign language to me. Enjoying your videos, your chili was the first one I found anywhere cause I was looking on Rumble before UA-cam. 🙂
I read the same thing about too much OA... I din’t know what to think about this.
@@marikalemay1218 I've even seen one video where the person states as a fact that storing an oxygen absorber in your baking soda or baking powder it could EXPLODE. I'd love to see the science behind that. I looked at the chemistry and I just didn't see how. I realize that some things like baking soda don't need oxygen absorbers, but explode? I don't think it would be too much to ask for them to share the scientific paper/article about the food being ruined by an oversized oxygen absorber.
There are different types of oxygen absorbers. Let's assume for the sake of discussion, that the ones we are using are type D absorbers and have their own moisture built into them. The amounts would be minuscule and I believe you would need large quantities of them to change the moisture levels in the food by detectable amounts.
Consider checking out this article about oxygen absorbers, what they are and how they work: www.impakcorporation.com/oxygen_absorbers/all-about-o2-absorbers Note that they rely on the "relative humidity in the surrounding atmosphere" to work. Or this Wikipedia page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_scavenger
@@SchoolReports I saw that video to when researching long term storage of baking powder/soda. I thought the same as you, bold claim with no evidence. I ignored it, LOL
Do US mandarins not have seeds. Aussie ones do.
I have seen ones that are not seedless. I don't buy them.
@@SchoolReports Our extension specialist in Arizona says the seeded varities of citrus are actually sweeter than the seedless one. He suggested we check in Latin markets for these.....Americans never like the seeds...LOL
@@lifewantstolive I've had seeded and seedless varieties and never noticed a big difference in sweetness, (but I've never had them at the same time for a side-by-side comparison) but the seedless one are just so much faster to process.