Freeze Drying – A Guide for Long Term Food Preservation

I think no other words inspired my interest in food preservation, especially historic methods, more than the Little House series. Reading those books as a little girl started a lifelong journey of studying culinary arts and researching cooking and preservation methods – including freeze drying.

“The little house was fairly bursting with good food stored away for the long winter. The pantry and the shed and the cellar were full, and so was the attic.” -Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House in The Big Woods

Now, as a mother of 9, I continue to learn and research with a baby on my hip and the other children delightfully sharing in the fun.

For 23 years now my husband and I have been learning and practicing self-sufficiency skills in a variety of settings. We’ve milked dairy animals, raised fowl for meat and eggs, planted gardens, and learned the valuable skills of canning and culturing for preserving many of the products of our labor. There is definitely a sense of accomplishment and peace when you see those pantry shelves full of properly preserved meat, homemade cheeses, and fermented or dried vegetables and fruits.

But those foods need to be eaten rather quickly. With the exception of some well smoked and dried meats, even the canned goods should be consumed within a year, maybe longer if you’re talking about jams and jellies made with a lot of sugar.  And in a family as big as ours, all that canning is a lot of work considering that we can easily use 3-4 quarts of canned ground beef for one meal! Realistically I can’t can enough to keep on the shelves for more than 6 months of short-term food storage; enough to last our family through one winter or an emergency where grocery stores have limited food supplies or are closed altogether.

Enter the Harvest Right home freeze dryer!

This is where home freeze drying for long term food storage becomes a valuable tool in your prepping pantry. Karen has some excellent resources for purchasing prepackaged freeze dried foods in her book A Year Without The Grocery Store, but they can be very expensive and when you are prepping for a large family those foods can be well above your budget. Our family decided that having our own home freeze dryer was the best use of our time and money.

We have owned our freeze dryer for 6 years now and I am still learning and trying new things with it.

Harvest Right has several different models to choose from. Besides their home units, they also have commercial, pharmaceutical, and scientific freeze dryers. The website has helpful information to guide you through the process of choosing which unit is best to suit your needs. They also have excellent customer service.

When we bought our unit 6 years ago, they only had one type of pump; the oil pump. Now they have two other types that can make the use and care of your unit less complicated. But they both come with price increases.

The first thing you’ll need to decide is which size makes the most sense for your family. The units are not cheap. It is definitely an investment. The price ranges from $2,195-$3,395 for the basic oil pump model. The price increases with each type of pump that you can choose from.

Before you give up on the idea of buying a unit because of the price. . .

Consider some serious questions first:

1. Buying meat in bulk is much cheaper than buying small amounts at a time. A freeze dryer allows you to store meat long-term (think 25 years). No worrying about the electricity going out or running out of propane or gasoline for a generator. You might not be able to get those things in the future!
2. Freeze drying preserves the nutrients in your food much better than any other food storage method.
3. Store-bought freeze-dried emergency or camping foods are prohibitively expensive and not very nutritious or tasty. A freeze dryer allows you to preserve your own home-cooked meals just the way you like them.
4. Freeze-dried foods can be stored with much less space than canned foods. While you can use jars for storing foods that you plan on eating right away, sealed mylar bags are best for long-term storage, allowing you to store dozens or more bags on pantry shelves or better yet, in 5-gallon buckets for really long term storage.
5. The foods are lightweight and easy to add to bug-out bags or take on camping trips. Just add water to rehydrate and eat a complete meal.

So, what has our experience been with our particular unit, why did we choose the one we have and what have we dried?

We choose the medium-sized unit with four trays. With a large family and with extended family to consider (because prepping isn’t just about hoarding for our own use but also planning to help others who might be in need) it didn’t make sense to try and save a little bit of money and get the smallest unit. However, the largest unit only added one more tray for the extra $700. It didn’t seem like we could process so much more for that price. So, we opted for the medium unit.

Our experience has been great overall. Be prepared that you will have a learning curve. You won’t love the outcome of everything you try but nothing goes to waste. If you dry leftovers of a casserole, you might be disappointed that it is a little mushy or more like a stew when you rehydrate it. That’s because there is no exact ratio for rehydrating foods. The flavor will be great but it might end up too watery or too dry. You have to play around with it.

We have found that the best results come from things that you can’t really mess up.

Our favorites have been:

• Homemade mashed potatoes
• Soups, Stews, and Chilies
• Scrambled eggs and sausage
• Leftover Thanksgiving stuffing
• Sliced beef roasts with the gravy and vegetables
• Sliced roast turkey
• Ham
• Raw unseasoned meats, like ground beef or stew meat
• Cooked or uncooked bacon
• Homemade yogurt drops for the baby

Issues to consider

One issue with freeze-drying is making absolutely sure that your food is completely dry before storing. The machine does a pretty good job of timing the dry cycle so you don’t have too much guesswork to do here, but using a wood moisture meter to check the moisture content of the food is very helpful for preventing waste. Another way to make sure you don’t have any issues with food not drying completely is to keep your food slices thin. Meat and vegetables should be relatively thin in order to help the machine do its job. Cubes of stew meat are usually fine as long as they are not more than an inch think. Thicker foods will dry but will take more than one cycle to complete.

The machine is rather loud. The pictures of it sitting beautifully on someone’s kitchen counter are a little off! You certainly could do that but keep in mind that a dry cycle runs about 24 hours. I don’t know how long you want to hear a machine running in your kitchen but I have very short patience for that! Depending on where we lived at the time we have either kept our dryer on a rolling stainless steel cart in our basement or in the garage.

My husband is not a huge fan of changing the oil on the pump. It’s time-consuming and can be messy. He has it down to a fine art now but our plan is to upgrade to the Premier Pump which can go much longer before needing to have the oil changed.

Is A Freeze Dryer Worth It? 

It’s pricy, it’s loud, it needs some playing around with. Is it really worth it? Yes! I love playing around with my freeze-dryer! It has become an invaluable tool in my large family long term food storage pantry. I never worry about leftovers going bad, making or buying too much of something and not using it up, running out of freezer space, or a shortage on canning jars. Most people still don’t have freeze dryers so even when mylar bags were in short supply I could still find some somewhere and the bags can be reused and resealed. I can always buy meat in bulk and pay less without worrying about how I’m going to store it. It’s possible buy in bulk from co-ops and local farmers, again paying less and not worry about making jams or jellies or trying to can things before they start to go bad.  Anything that buys me a little extra mommy sanity and saves me time and money too – I love!

What About You?

Have you ever used a Freeze Dryer?  If you have, what are your favorite foods to freeze-dry?  What are your favorite ways to use that freeze-dried food?

Together, Let’s Love, Learn, Practice, and Overcome.