Freeze Drying Carrots & Rehydrating
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- Freeze drying about 7 lbs of frozen carrots and doing a rehydration test,
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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:
Airline by Geographer
Pink Flamenco by Doug Maxwell
Doing this today. Thanks!
Thanks.
Nice!
I really enjoy your channel!
Thanks. We're working our way through the alphabet; not an exhaustive list, just something for each letter.
SchoolReports haha that’s is a great idea! I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Sorry if my question is dumb. Are those frozen carrots precooked? If I buy raw carrots can I freeze dry them without cooking them?
Ha! You're terrible at dumb questions; I've seen dumb questions before and that's not what they look like! 🤣 This is a good question.
I personally would at least blanch them before freeze drying. We have tested some asparagus (and fresh green bean, broccoli and cauliflower) without blanching. In all cases we though they turned out better when blanched. (flavor and texture) Is it required? Probably not, but I would every time!
These were store bought frozen carrots. I'm going to assume they had been blanched before bagging; pretty much all store bought frozen vegetables are.
Even when we do our own home-grown vegetable we blanch them before freezing and freeze drying.
extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/vegetable-blanching-directions-and-times-home-freezer-storage
nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html
www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/food-nutrition/freezing-vegetables
www.healwithfood.org/chart/how-long-to-blanch-vegetables-before-freezing.php
foodandnutrition.org/blogs/stone-soup/why-you-should-be-blanching-vegetables/
@@SchoolReports thank you so much for the info. I’m about to do carrots tonight!
Try a popcorn scoop.
Popcorn or french fry scoop. That's a great idea! I'd never thought of that; I'll be ordering one soon.
Did carrots. Looked great coming out of the freeze dryer. Rehydrated, yes. Taste was terrible. They soaked up the water, when chewed the water comes out like it would a sponge. They were terrible. Tasted like water. What I did were raw carrots that I froze and put into the machine. Maybe cooking first would taste better?
Carrot sponge; I know what you mean! They look good almost instantly but they're not.
Did you do fresh, raw carrots? I have not tried fresh, raw carrots, yet. I assume the bagged frozen vegetables that we have freeze dried have been blanched before bagging. When we do fresh, raw vegetables we do blanch them ourselves before freeze drying. (like we did with the asparagus ua-cam.com/video/_cPblGY8Zfw/v-deo.html ) As far as them being like sponges, ours did the same thing until they had soaked in the cold water for at least 2 hours. They really needed a lot of time; time is your friend when it comes to rehydrating. They were even better after overnight in the fridge. Pickles got better for 2 or 3 days!
@@SchoolReports I did them raw/fresh. Ok I'll try blanching them. I'll also try cooking them. Thank you for the tip. :)
I am curious as to how these are now that they have been in storage for a year. Mine that I did for (short term) snacking out of a jar were horrible after a week. they turned white and smelled like paint thinner.
Yikes! I've never had anything like that. Perhaps moisture and oxygen? I'll open a couple of the bags from this video tomorrow and check them. I'll make a short video and share the results. (it might take a couple days) I hope mine aren't like that. I did find a slight issue with some thin bags I used a while back, when I tried to cheap -out on them; I'm correcting that now.
I opened one of the bags from this video (from about here ua-cam.com/video/WmNfdLseJdY/v-deo.html ) I don't mind telling you, I was a bit nervous about it after reading your description of yours.
They were great and delicious! Whew! I heated them with a little butter and bacon bits.
Short video coming very soon.
@@SchoolReports Oh that is good to know, I will be able to save some for future use. I'm going to have to try again for current use and put in a mylar bag with an 02 instead of a purple jar and hope it doesn't go bad as fast.
I had the same issue, they turned white and had a shellac smell, so I came here to see what I could have done wrong.
Organic frozen diced carrots, completely dried, vacuum seals with o2 absorber and not very good at all 😔 so I have no idea
Our FD gets here this coming week, and I've been wanting to try carrots. When I dehydrate them and then rehydrate they taste like water. Does freeze drying retain more flavor than using dehydrating method?
With freeze dried carrots you can even eat them when they are still dry. They have a very strong carrot flavor. Rehydrating Carrots Freeze Dried on 5 22 20 (16 months old) ua-cam.com/video/-OiemWzNe5A/v-deo.html Carrots need hours to rehydrate well. (I like overnight)
It's amazing how many thing benefit from an overnight stay in the 'fridge. Pickles do better with 2 or 3 days. Remember, it took many hours to get the water out. Some food rehydrate in seconds, like sliced ham, and some things do better with a long time, like carrots and pickles.
How long was the total cycle?
Sorry, I didn't notice the time. I think that those carrots were in the 30 hour range. I never really pay attention to the time because there are so many variables that the time can differ greatly even with two batches of the same food. But, in general, marshmallows are very fast (18-20 hrs.) and big chunks of fresh pineapple is very slow. (50-70+ hrs.)
@@SchoolReports thank you for the reply, I am still learning and have much to learn. I did a run of mixed vegetables and wound up picking out the carrots because they were hours longer than anything else. And canned pears. Lots to learn.
Good video! Do you FD carrots that have been cooked or raw? I'm thinking you can do either. What do people usually do?
@@leezelina6668 since this video, 2 yrs ago, I have done both. I constantly over load my trays , but in my medium, 12 lbs of baby carrots cooked are 100% perfect at 36 hrs. The same amount raw would take 4 days. Some raw stuff refuses to let go of its water. Carrots are one of them.
all that salt will fall off.. wait till you've rehydrated the carrots then add your salt/pepper.
I thought the salt might fall off, but it didn't. It made a salty layer on the outside and even soaked in a bit. You can see this at 2:35 Maybe it was because I started with frozen carrots and the salt acted like ice melt on the sidewalk?
I used some of the salted carrots in a recent video and the salt was still part of the carrots. - Rehydrating Freeze Dried Peas & Carrots - ua-cam.com/video/5tb6z2ENmMY/v-deo.htmlsi=GdGKvMvD00DleWbD&t=289
Thanks for all the great videos you have produced and posted! You are the absolute bomb! @@SchoolReports 👍
@@SchoolReportsI salt raw veggies before going in and it sticks perfectly!
@@amy3458 Yep! And the salted, dry carrots were delicious, a lot better than the non salted for dry snacking.
O for Pete’s sake. I have watched 5 videos on freeze drying carrots and no one gives total drying times. Is it a state secret or what? I realize trying times will very by where you live time a year yada yada yada.
But for crying out loud if it took 22, 30 or 45 hours to dry that would be more helpful information then watching you load the trays.
Sorry, I didn't used to track the information. I'm going to estimate that this 7lb batch took around 30 to 35 hours in my machine.
On all the current series I'm doing, I have been tracking the following information that I didn't usually track.
Freeze Drying Your First 500 lbs of Food - Batch 8 - Carrots, Crinkle Cut, Frozen ua-cam.com/video/xUFg1MSDXMo/v-deo.html
Cost of the carrots: $10.18 for 10 lbs
Total batch time: 41 hours 17 minutes (it was finished by 37:30)
Weight before drying: 10 lbs Weight after drying: 462 grams (about 1 lb)
Power use: 27.59 kWh
Bagged into: 14 quart 7 mil Mylar bags with 300cc oxygen absorbers.
Yes, it's a state secret; we could tell but then we'd have to.... Wait a minute, that's for going faster than the speed of light.🤣
@@DMS20231 🤣 You ARE my current favorite commenter! For a long time I've tried to tell people that the time information is almost useless, but they demand to know. I only track it now for the videos.
This has been my standard (cut-and-paste) answer -
The short answer is: I don't know.
The long answer/non-answer is:
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 just 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...
I hardly tracked the total time because it's almost worthless, just a ballpark 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.
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 quite 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; Which machine you have, which firmware it's running, type of food, water content, sugar content, temperature of the food, ambient temperature in the room, 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), and I'm sure there are more.
This is a flawed test. You purchased dry frozen veggies that were presumable blanced beforehand. Then you went and repeated the proces. So the veggies were dry frozen twice. Lets see you try doing the test with fresh veggies and compare the results. From what I heard is that not all veggies retain their structure. Carrots become soggy/spongy after rehydration when they havent been blanced behorehand.
I would disagree. It's not a "flawed test." All vegetable should be blanched before freezing whether or not they are going to be freeze dried. I assume the ones I bought were blanched before I bought them so I did not blanch them. I did not see where I repeated any process. When I do my home grown vegetables I do blanch them. ( ua-cam.com/video/_cPblGY8Zfw/v-deo.html ) Carrots do quite well rehydrating, given enough time; eat them too soon and they will be soggy/spongy. And what is "dry frozen"?
@@SchoolReports Why do you say that all veggies need to be blanches before freezing? Doesnt that kinda defeat the purpose of preserving the nutritions? If you have a resource on he need for blanching
I'd like to investigate.
@@suppaduppa Yes, it is important to not overcook the items to preserve as much nutrition as possible.
extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/vegetable-blanching-directions-and-times-home-freezer-storage
nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/blanching.html
www.ag.ndsu.edu/publications/food-nutrition/freezing-vegetables
www.healwithfood.org/chart/how-long-to-blanch-vegetables-before-freezing.php
foodandnutrition.org/blogs/stone-soup/why-you-should-be-blanching-vegetables/
@@DMS20231 Thanks! (and thanks for the Big Boy video)
@@DMS20231 Did you not upload the Union Pacific “Big Boy” video last year showing the restored train going by?