Freeze Drying Fundamentals: Greens
If you’re contemplating shopping for a freeze dryer and have regarded across the web, I doubt you’ve discovered a compendium of clear data on greatest practices for forms of meals. I want to present some fundamentals when coping with broad genres of meals for these , as the quantity of homework I’ve executed to have the best quantity of success when freeze drying greens will really feel wasted in any other case.
In these segments, I’ll element the knowledge I’ve discovered first hand, in addition to from educational materials whereas staying away from as a lot unfounded information as attainable.
Why?
If somebody spends a couple of thousand {dollars} on a bit of equipment to protect meals, you’re going to need to have the ability to freeze dry meals in essentially the most environment friendly methods attainable (most quantity of meals within the least period of time.) To maximise one’s effectiveness in freeze drying with the least quantity of poor outcomes, I’m hoping this information will likely be acquired nicely.
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Freeze Drying is an up and coming pattern for tenting and prepping. Dig in:
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Robert Larson, PhD had an immense ardour of biotechnology and meals sciences. Throughout his life, he hung out with Whirlpool (yeah, the washer firm) learning meals for his or her preparation and consumption in house. At Whirlpool, he helped develop the know-how and strategies to offer diet to astronauts in house. Any house nerd will know Rita Rapp’s well-known sugar cookies. Dr. Larson was the one to develop a skinny gelatin sheath to maintain the cubes from leaving crumbs concerning the Apollo cabins.
In 1970, Dr. Larson developed 30 servings of dried greens to find out their rehydration and palatability after being processed, along with the microbiological necessities of shelf secure storage (MIL-STD-668). Dr. Larson’s analysis into freezing, thawing and evaluating textural qualities of greens led to additional investigations on cooking strategies; i.e. how a lot water to make use of, and so forth. Initially our homeboy tried:
- Mashed Potatoes
- Candy Potatoes
- Asparagus
- Broccoli
- Spinach
- Inexperienced Beans
With this analysis, it was discovered that candy potatoes don’t hydrate in addition to potatoes, spinach didn’t look that nice as soon as reconstituted, and broccoli & spinach weren’t desired by style testers. The successes out of the primary six greens have been Asparagus and Mashed Potatoes.
Researchers positioned the servings of those two meals in mylar pouches at 100*F for 2 weeks, then re-tested their suitability. Satisfaction was had by all.
Within the analysis, Dr. Larson listed the amount of elements, technique of cooking, making ready, and at what temperatures and stress the meals was to be freeze dried. heck, even the portion shapes and volumes have been indicated; 27 g +/- 1 g for mashed potatoes, and eight.4 g +/- 0.2 g for asparagus. Potatoes had 3 oz of water added for ten minutes, whereas asparagus had 2 oz of water for ten minutes.
Dimension is Time and Time is Cash
Working a freeze dryer varies relying on what your electrical energy prices are and the way large the meals is that you just put in there, amongst different issues. One of many methods I’ve been capable of scale back run occasions, which ends up in sooner flip round speeds is to chop meals a lot smaller than it must be. Whereas Dr. Larson’s work reveals meals being lower at 5/16′ at it’s narrowest, I are inclined to hold my greens roughly 1/4 – 1/3″ thick. Assume julienned french fries for the suitable measurement.
Utilizing a mandoline slicer or french fry press appears to make helpful work out of almost any vegetable.
If some meals are too finicky for both machine, otherwise you need to stay low-cost, I additionally use some holder-slicers that seem like hair picks. This additionally helps me appropriately measurement cooked meat when slicing.
I discover protecting objects underneath 3/8″ retains freeze drying occasions at or round 24 hours. Everyone knows how important timing a freeze dry run is when a batch begins beeping at 03:00am, stating it has accomplished. By processing for twenty-four hours, there are much less surprises for when meals could be saved away correctly.
Throw What You Know
Along with proof based mostly practices, there are occasions the place you additionally need to get issues out of the backyard prepped and preserved earlier than going to waste. This was the occasion with the multitude of inexperienced beans I made a couple of weeks in the past. I used to be capable of freeze dry about 5 kilos of inexperienced beans in a single attempt. This diminished them to about twelve ounces, which I cut up into three separate luggage.
Tomato season is ending and having tomatoes prepared for a stew or chili on a chilly day by no means appears like a nasty thought! I feel it might be neat to have chunks of tomato in a freeze dried home-made chili as soon as I begin attempting to make full meals within the machine!
As per the analysis from NASA from 1970, I did a trial run of asparagus to see how it might do.
In Evaluate
The world is a giant place. Whenever you’re about to step foot in doing one thing you’ve by no means executed earlier than, it by no means hurts to see if there have been others who accomplished the identical job (or related) earlier than you. Freeze drying as we all know shouldn’t be a brand new factor, however the lack of analysis well-known to the general public usually leaves folks blindly attempting issues till it succeeds.
By counting on priority, it’s a lot simpler to maximise yields and forestall failed batches. All in all, I like to recommend you check out something that you just’ve been excited about. As a rule, your tax {dollars} have already gone to see whether or not it’s a viable thought or not! I’m hoping to progress ahead with fruits, meats, after which multiple-ingredient batches on my technique to gaining mastery of my freeze dryer in preparation for making my very own tenting meals!
Inform me what you suppose! Do you might have a freeze dryer? What profitable issues have you ever processed? What would you suggest me attempting to freeze dry?
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