Common Freeze Drying Mistakes To Avoid So The Food Tastes And Looks Wonderful Every Time!

No one likes to spend their hard earned money on food and have to throw it away because it went bad. This is why freeze drying is so popular. It allows you to freeze your food and eat it later so less food is wasted. However,freezing drying can be tough if you aren't sure how to do it. These common freeze drying mistakes will help you have better results from now on!

Some Of The Most Common Freeze Drying Mistakes To Avoid Are:

1 Mixing Raw Meat with Other Foods
You want to avoid cross contamination to prevent the spread of e coli and other bacteria. Scientists use freeze drying to preserve bacteria samples. This means your odds of any bacteria on your raw meat surviving the freeze drying process are pretty high. If you wouldn’t mix the foods on a kitchen cutting board, don’t mix them in the freeze drying chamber.

2 Mixing Foods with Dissimilar Flavors
When we freeze dried green beans and bananas in the same batch of food, we ended up with green bean flavored bananas. The flavor was subtle, but it was definitely there . Since then, we’ve been careful to keep sweet and savory foods separate, with good results.

3 Attempting to Freeze Dry High Sugar Foods
Some foods like very high sugar content fruit, jams or jellies do not freeze dry well. No matter how long you leave them in, they will still be a little (or a lot) sticky. This is because sugar binds to free water molecules, preventing them from escaping the food. The good news is that most plain fruit still works very well, although sweeter fruits like peaches or pineapple will likely require a longer drying cycle. The only fruit I’ve tried so far that took a very, very long time and still came out tacky was pears.

4 Trying to Dry High Fat Foods
One of the first freeze dryer reviews I read was from a fellow who attempted to freeze dry butter. He ended up with a massive mess.

Fat will also go rancid more quickly than other food items, so a meat or dairy product with higher fat levels is probably best used within 5 years. Make sure that if you want to freeze dry meat products that as much fat as possible is removed before drying. Full fat dairy such as whole milk, sour cream and cheese work just fine.

5 Freeze Drying Large Pieces of Meat
Bigger hunks of meat simply don’t rehydrate well. Even the sausage patties were mighty chewy. For best results, stick to meat that is shredded, ground or diced. If it’s normally served in a sauce, soup, or stew of some sort, even better. Rehydrating with plenty of liquid and a lot of surface area for that liquid to soak into makes for a tastier meal.

6 Not Using a Liner in the Pans
The first time I loaded up my freeze dryer, I didn’t bother with liners for the pans. After all, they’re stainless steel, non-reactive and food grade. My freeze dried goodies did not want to come off the pan. I purchased sheets of reusable parchment and cut them to size. You can also use regular parchment paper, too. With care, you should be able to use it for a couple of loads.

7 Expecting Quick Drying in Hot Weather
Higher temps add hours to the drying time sometimes many, many hours. Our unit is in our attached garage, which is insulated but not air conditioned. When the heat and humidity go up (80°+F), I take a break from freeze drying.

8 Freeze Drying Fruit with Tough Skins Whole
For fruits with tough skins like grapes, cranberries, cherry tomatoes and blueberries, extra minutes of prep time will save hours of freeze drying time. Grapes are typically sliced in half lengthwise. We prep cherry tomatoes the same way. For blueberries and cranberries, I freeze them on a baking sheet before freeze drying, and then give them a very brief spin in a food processor.

9 Filling the Trays with Liquid Before Loading Them in the Unit
Get your try in the freeze dryer, and then pour the liquid in – or load it right next to the freeze dryer and transport it inches instead of feet. Each tray will hold about a quart.

10 Filling the Freeze Dryer Too Full
The Harvest Right Freeze Dryer works by pulling water out of the food and having that water freeze on the inside of the vacuum chamber, forming a layer of ice. Too much food = too much ice = machine that can’t finish the drying cycle. Load the unit right the first time and save yourself some trouble. Freeze dry no more than 10 pounds in at one time for the mid-sized unit – 6 pounds is a better limit for high moisture foods.

As you can see, these freeze drying mistakes can cause some major problems. If you want to avoid messes, really long drying times and make sure your food is safe to eat it is a good idea to make sure you avoid these mistakes. You may be stunned by how much better your food will be! Have you made these freeze drying mistakes before?

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