Freeze Drying vs. Dehydrating How are they Different?

what exactly is the difference between dehydrating and freeze drying i took five different foods and i freeze dried them and dehydrated them so that we could look at the difference [Music] what exactly is the difference between freeze-dried foods and dehydrated foods well it's a little bit hard to explain so i took five different foods and i freeze dried them and dehydrated them so that we could look at the difference let's try some fresh fruit how about some apples [Music] so [Music] and some bread [Music] some fresh herbs this one's parsley [Music] some fruit smoothie and some raw shaved beef slices [Music] let's turn on the dehydrator [Music] turn on the freeze dryer and then we'll let the machines do their thing and we'll see the difference between the two different methods what exactly is the difference between dehydrating and freeze drying well when you dehydrate you use warm air and blowing air in order to remove between 70 and 90 percent of the moisture out of the food this means that without that moisture you're not going to get the bacteria buildup or the mold and so the food can store on your shelf usually dehydrated foods can store on your shelf pretty well for about a year depending on how much moisture you've pulled out of them dehydrating only uses either a dehydrator or just a warm sunny day or even a low temperature on your oven so it's really really easy to get started with now freeze drying is a little bit different instead of using heat freeze drying uses really really cold temperatures and then after dropping the food down to an extremely cold temperature like negative 40 degrees then it creates a vacuum around the food and alternately heats and cools the food in order to really remove a lot of moisture out of the food this removes closer to 99 percent of the moisture out of that food allowing that food to retain incredible nutrient density and to last for a really long time on your shelf i mean like 20 to 25 years sitting on your shelf the downside of that is that you absolutely have to have a freeze drying unit now there have been commercial freeze drying units around for a really long time but we've just started getting home models of freeze dryers right now to my knowledge harvest rate is the only home model that is available and they're kind of expensive actually they're way more expensive than even getting a dehydrator but they can do a lot of things that a dehydrator can't do so let's go check out the food [Music] we have freeze-dried apple slices and dehydrated apple slices now these dehydrated apple slices are a little more dehydrated than you would probably make them if you wanted to eat them fresh as a snack this is so that they store a little bit longer so they're almost a little bit crispy maybe still a little bit leathery you can see that they kind of tear and there's a little bit of brownness to them and they really got pretty thin now you can see that the the shape of these actually changed in the dehydrating process check out these freeze dried apples they actually look almost exactly the same there's a little bit of brown but they haven't really changed any shape this is really classic when it comes to dehydrated and freeze-dried foods freeze-dried fruit foods stay almost the exact same shape and look when they're freeze dried dehydrated foods are going to shrivel up they're going to dry they're going to change a little bit this has to do with the heat and the slow time that it takes them to go through that dehydrating process these things have been frozen almost instantly when they go in so they stay very much the same as when they were raw but check this out this is what's really interesting about freeze-dried food it's almost i don't it's almost like styrofoam and if you eat this the flavor is like a fresh apple it's not like a dehydrated apple where the flavor changes a little bit what are the pros and cons of doing fruit this way well you can rehydrate these apple slices and they're going to be very very similar to a fresh apple you will never rehydrate these and turn them back into something that's similar to a fresh apple they're always going to be different in texture even when rehydrated both of them make great snacks just the way they are freeze-dried or dehydrated and both of them will easily store on your shelf however these guys are going to store for about 25 years as long as they're kept in a moisture and oxygen free environment these guys are probably only going to store for about a year well now for the bread the first question is is why would anybody freeze dry or dehydrate bread in the first place and the answer is that you can make incredible bread crumbs croutons or anything else that you want like that that involves dry bread it's a great way to save little bits of leftover bread and make it useful for something later you can see the dehydrated really crumbles apart it's actually pretty light and fluffy very very crumbly i gotta tell you guys though there is really no way to rehydrate this so if you try to rehydrate this it's gonna get really soggy just because you can't add water to even fresh bread and have it do anything besides get soggy so you're kind of stuck with using it like this but it's a great way to get something like some bread crumbs now freeze dried bread is actually pretty similar but look at that it's actually harder it's harder to break that's because we've removed more of the moisture what this means is that you could save this for a little bit longer and if you wanted to make bread crumbs out of this you just toss it into your food processor maybe with some spices and it would be really really good same thing here though you're really not going to rehydrate this and get anything good out of it so it's best to either break it up and just use it as croutons or to use it as bread crumbs you can throw these either of these into a skillet hot skillet with some butter and some herbs in it and make an amazing crouton really really fast and this is a great way both meth heads to preserve bread for later use as long as it's not for toast for breakfast check out the fresh herbs you can see right off that there's a bit of visual difference between the two sets of fresh herbs these are a little bit less vibrant in color they're also withered down quite a bit more than this again one of the benefits of freeze drying is that the freeze dryer almost instantly freezes your produce so it keeps it the you know very much the same as when it was fresh and then it sucks the moisture out of it this is going to wilt this a lot before it gets to the point of actually being dehydrated in that wilting process you lose a lot of flavor and vitamins out of the dehydrated foods they're still great and dried herbs are kind of the standard they're like the long time standard of how to preserve herbs look at that it's still beautiful bright green but a lot of us realize that there's certain herbs that just they change flavor a lot when they're dehydrated things like basil parsley like this cilantro and so they tend to get way less exciting when you dehydrate them freeze drying on the other hand really saves the flavor it's kind of a lot more like fresh it makes it much more exciting to cook with oh and it smells fresh like it still smells really good so that is a great way to go i started preferring freeze drying for my fresh herbs now i want to talk about one downside of this though and that is because freeze drying pulls out so much moisture that freeze-dried foods tend to suck in moisture from the environment much more quickly than dehydrated foods that means if you want to put some herbs in like a shaker to use in your kitchen or just to have them available and on hand if you don't keep them in a oxygen free vacuum sealed environment they're actually going to take on a lot of moisture and they might start getting moldy in some ways they're going to last a lot longer in storage but when you go to start using them you have to use them really really quickly for that reason dehydrated is great but for the reason that they're going to last longer in storage and the flavors are brighter brighter the freeze drying is better [Music] now to look at the smoothie this is so different some of the other things we've looked at they're kind of similar they look just about the same maybe a little bit of difference but this is so different now i really dehydrated these so it's not leathery you could have a really really leathery one a little bit still there you know it's kind of bendable and look at it tear like there's toughness to it do you see that there's a reason this is called fruit leather these are great a lot of us grew up with these as snack they're a wonderful way to preserve your fruit you can even rehydrate these into like a fruit sauce but check this out you guys look at how different this is this is definitely not a fruit leather do you see how crispy that is and it's it's foamy kind of just like i put it in there look how thick and foamy look at this i can take this in my hands and literally in my hands powder that and turn it into a fruit smoothie powder what this is amazing for is if you actually want to have a fruit smoothie again but not in season so if you have a lot of fruit in season and you like drinking your smoothies but you don't like filling up your freezer with all of that fruit this is an incredible way to go because you can actually make the fruit smoothie when you have everything fresh and then you can put this powder in a cup add water and end up with a fruit smoothie again that is so amazing you can even pop it in the blender with a little bit of ice if you wanted it to be nice and cold you're never going to get that result with this on the other hand you do get this phenomenal snack that the kids love and this is a wonderful way to get fruit into your family throughout the entire year so two totally different prop products two great products but two really really different end uses when it comes down to it this this tastes good but it's kind of it's kind of like biting onto extremely fruit flavored styrofoam it's kind of a funny texture whereas this has that great leathery texture now for the beef this is probably the biggest difference between dehydrating and freeze drying when we dehydrated the beef we took it up to 165 degrees fahrenheit that essentially cooks the beef over the dehydrating period and makes it safe to eat this is beef jerky right here this was unflavored however you could completely flavor this if i put this in a cup of water and let it sit for a little bit it would get softer but it would never turn back into anything that resembled fresh raw meat this is a incredible snack just the way it is so delicious so good you just have to make sure you get it up to that 165 degrees in your dehydrator so that it's safe and not considered raw with any of the pathogens that could be involved with that now this on the other hand is an entirely different product in fact i want to show you guys right now i'm going to take just some fresh water and i'm just going to spray this this is going to take a minute or two and turn it over and spray the other side this went in raw and it never got heated up like in the dehydrating process and so what we have here is completely raw meat that has had all of the moisture sucked out of it that means when you go to rehydrate this you end up with raw meat again and believe it or not i mean can you see this already this is i'll give it another minute so it can suck up a little bit more water but this is i mean it's identical to fresh raw meat except for this stuff can sit on your shelf for years at a time this is really exciting now the other side of this though is that you would not stick this stuff in your mouth and eat it as beef jerky it is not cooked now you could cook the meat and freeze dry that and end up with some sort of a snack but it wouldn't resemble anything like the beef jerky that we're used to so again you have two totally different products here something great as a snack but not awesome to be a you know part of your meal necessarily and something that can be rehydrated and then cooked up with onions and bell peppers and turned into an amazing meal but not something you're going to nibble on as a snack you guys there's a lot of other things that freeze dryers and dehydrators can do differently there are some things that a dehydrator can do that a freeze dryer can't do things like raising your bread because it holds at a nice warm temperature incubating your yogurt all of those things can be done in a dehydrator but cannot be done in a freeze dryer now on the other hand a freeze dryer can preserve a lot of things that a dehydrator can't things like milk eggs cheese can all be preserved in a freeze dryer at home giving you a shelf stable product that you can use for years on end hey if you guys want to check out an amazing meal that i made in the freeze dryer check out this video right here you might be amazed

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 211,522

Keywords: Homesteading, Homesteading Family, freeze dried food, freeze dryer, harvest right, freeze drying, freeze dried, harvest right freeze dryer, dehydrated food, long term food storage, home freeze dryer, freeze dried food taste test, freeze dried food review, freeze dried food storage, freeze dried food comparison, freeze dried food prepping, freeze dried food rehydrate, dehydrated food taste test, dehydrated food vs freeze dried, dehydrated food shelf life

Id: 1VwcZRhRJl0

Length: 16min 58sec (1018 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 02 2022