One Year with a Freeze Dryer. Was it WORTH IT?

hey everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead well it has been almost a year since we've had a harvest right freeze dryer here on the homestead we thought we would give you guys an update about how we feel about it overall some of the things that we've learned about it through the last year and then we're actually going to do a taste test of a few more foods that we haven't really shown you guys yet we've been having freeze-dried food and the process that we go through we've been including that in a lot of our videos recently because we've been doing a weekly video showing all of the things that we've been preserving in the month of august because we just have a huge harvest coming in now the freeze dryer that we have is the harvest right medium-sized freeze dryer we have the medium-sized freeze dryer and we have the premier oil pump if i had the whole thing to do over again i personally would go with the oilless pump if money were no object it's quite a bit more expensive but i do think in the long run it is a little less hassle not that the oil pump is a hassle um because honestly you only have to change the oil in it about every 25 to 30 cycles which really isn't much work at all in fact over the past year harvest red has come out with a new filter system for the oil which has made it really no work at all so basically what you'll do is about every 25 or 30 cycles you'll bring out this looks kind of like one of those brita water filters but this is actually what you filter your oil through you're going to take this cover off you're going to literally hold this underneath the little spigot on the bottom of your pump you're going to drain your oil down into here and it's going to filter through and come out the bottom completely clean and then you can actually reuse this oil the next time you do an oil change basically you're just reusing the oil over and over so in a year we've barely even used any out of this bottle of oil that i purchased i actually bought this at o'reilly auto parts it's the robin air uh premium high vacuum pump oil and you know again it's something i could buy locally and in a year i mean it's only down to about here because you keep reusing it over and over so really like i said i would go with the oilless pump if money were no object at all but if what you can afford is the oil pump like we have it's really not a hassle and if and if i were able to do this all over again i would get the size large freeze dryer just because we have large harvests coming in this time of year i do large batches of broth we just do large batches of things around here right so if i had a little bit more freeze dryer space that's just the more i could preserve now the medium is doing well for us you know we're preserving a lot of food but we have it running pretty much non-stop but if i had the opportunity to pack that sucker with even more each batch that'd be awesome now a lot of you have been watching my recent preserving videos and you've noticed that i have not been using this insulator cushion thingy with the freeze dryer now i want to let you know that this is completely optional and as far as i'm aware i don't even think they're sending these along anymore no i think a lot of people were having a hard time using this and the using the door that closes and having a good seal so when you see that our old videos we use this insulator and our new videos we haven't been now as we've been doing videos about the freeze dryer we've gotten a lot of questions from you guys about how we're storing the food and where to get the supplies to store the food so i want to go over that with you really quickly all of the freeze-dried food that we do i should say most except for just a few things that we're going to eat right away we store in mylar bags these mylar bags are you know they're extra thick they seal really well we actually have a machine that seals these that comes with your freeze dryer when you buy it and then inside of here we put an oxygen absorber which basically uses up all the oxygen inside of this bag and between the bag and the oxygen absorber if you store these in the right conditions which is just you know kind of room temperature these will actually last 25 to 30 years so like in this bag we have uh fresh tomato powder from our garden this year and these are all the things we're going to try today by the way fresh green beans out of the garden this year some pico de gallo that sarah made and then poultry broth so we're going to try all of these in just a little bit but i wanted to show you guys how we store these i've been getting a lot of questions on instagram about why we don't vacuum seal our freeze-dried food rather than using these mylar bags and oxygen absorber and then just heat sealing them and the reason is these bags in this system are rated for 25 years of storage the vacuum sealing materials are not rated for long-term storage to this degree if you look at the vacuum seal bags they usually say that they're good for a couple years so this is definitely a longer term system and really a safer system for all your food the last thing you want is for you to go to all this work growing and freeze drying and packaging and then in a year when you open it it's no good now a lot of you have asked where we get these products uh a lot of these we got actually free with the freeze dryer and i think they send them with every freeze dryer when you buy it so you can see these are actually the harvest right brand but we also buy the mylar bags on amazon we bought some in bulk through azure standard and same with the oxygen absorbers to be honest when we need these supplies we just kind of look around for the best deal and get them wherever we can at the time or whoever has the size that we want at the time so out of all of the ways that you can preserve food from the garden from the grocery store if you find a great deal out of all of the ways why are we choosing to use a freeze dryer is one of the ways to preserve well the main reason is we want a long-term storage option for the food that we grow and raise here on our homestead we put a lot of time a lot of energy and a lot of money into growing really fantastic food for us when you freeze food you lose nutrients when you can food you lose nutrients when you dehydrate food you lose nutrients with freeze drying it retains like 95 percent of the nutrients so you're getting that nutrition all along right the other thing is the length of time that these things are good for if they're packaged correctly and they're freeze-dried correctly these can last up to 25 years now our plan is not to open these in 25 years but it gives us some cushion say for instance something happens to us and physically we can't produce this food or we don't have the money to go buy food from the grocery store we have a back stock of food that we grew that we know is filled with nutrition that we can rely on right yeah the plan isn't to wait 24 years and then start using this stuff the plan is to use this stuff along the way but isn't it a comforting feeling to know that you can wait 25 years if you want to that if that in 25 years this will still be just as nutritious as it was the day you packaged it i mean to me that's just a comforting feeling to know that you have that option not that i think we're going to necessarily use that option right the other ways that you preserve the food just doesn't last as long and so we're really happy to have this as a way to preserve our hard work so now the fun part can begin we get lots of suggestions and requests it to show you all how they look when they come out of the freeze dryer how they taste how do we use the products so today we brought out some things to reconstitute or to eat freeze-dried and and show you what they look like and give you a taste test right so all of these are foods that we grew or raised right here on our farm and they're all things that you could easily produce yourselves as well so we're gonna just get right down to it i think we should start with this one right here tomato powder why don't you tell them what went into this to make it in the first place well these are actually just cherry tomatoes and i put them in the freeze dryer i cut them in half put them in the freeze dryer when they were all done i blended them up and turned it into a tomato powder right now the purpose of the tomato powder for us is going to be to add to either soups or to thicken my tomato sauce if it's too runny but also to make tomato paste right tomato paste isn't something that's easy to make from your homegrown tomatoes because it has to cook down so long that it can taste burnt and bitter right so i love to make homemade pizza but a lot of times the home made tomato sauce is a little too thin to use as pizza sauce so my hope is with this tomato powder you can just add less liquid to start with and make like sarah said a paste that will be able to turn into awesome pizza sauce so let's open this one first and give it a try all right with this tomato powder we're going to try making two different things we're going to try making tomato juice we're also going to try making tomato paste we have some water boiling on the stove so as soon as that's boiling we can try making the tomato paste but for the tomato juice obviously you don't want to drink to make boiling water so i just have a good glass of cold tap water we're going to give that a try i'm not really sure how much we're going to add here so i've got a i've got a third of a cup measuring cup i'm going to put that in and see what that does maybe just a little less you can see the powder there we're just gonna mix that in now this does have uh the seeds and skin and everything and because we did do these holes so that actually looks really good it looks like tomato juice i know sarah's not a big fan of tomato juice so i'll give it a try so i think i'll let this sit for just a few minutes before we try it just to make sure everything is fully rehydrated it sounds like the water is boiling on the stove so let's get the tomato paste started as well and then we'll be able to try them both i have some boiling water here i'm also going to put about a third of a cup of the tomato powder in this little bowl and try to turn it into some tomato paste now this will require a lot less water than the tomato juice i'm just going to add a couple tablespoons of this boiling water so now this is i think the consistency that we would want for tomato paste now like kevin had said when we blended these up these are whole cherry tomatoes so it does have the seeds in them and it does have the skins in them so basically we're just going to let this sit and rehydrate until everything is soft and then we'll come back to it all right the tomato juice has been sitting long enough but i have decided to strain it because it is a little on the chunky side for me so all right and then hey look we have more tomato paste so we can save that and do something with that as well but here's our tomato juice now i haven't tried it yet it looks like tomato juice to me now personally i like tomato juice for a little salt so i'm gonna put a little bit of salt in there all right let's give it a try it's actually really good it tastes just like fresh tomato juice ah it's amazing it's actually tastes exactly like fresh tomato juice so that that's a winner for sure if you like tomato juice which i really do um it's absolutely perfect and you get the byproduct of having some extra leftover stuff to make some more tomato paste so i actually think the tomato paste has sat long enough as well it looks really good but i'm gonna let sarah give that one a try and this is actually the perfect consistency for tomato paste i did not add any more water i'm just going to take a little bit of a taste yes i'm going to end up double dipping but we're all family here it's really good it doesn't taste quite cooked like a tomato sauce or tomato paste would right out of the can but it's very good it's surprisingly sweet but while we have it here i'm going to season it up like we're going to use it for pizza sauce or something so i'm just going to add a few ingredients just a little bit of salt a little oregano put that in there and then a little bit of garlic it's going to make it so good so this is what we would be doing if we were going to turn this into pizza sauce now the longer this sits the more you're going to be able to taste really the wonderful oregano flavoring but let me take a taste now that i've added those things it's really good it tastes like when you go to a really nice uh pizza restaurant where everything tastes so authentic that's exactly what this pizza sauce tastes like fantastic this is a huge winner you know we do have a couple crackers kevin made some homemade crackers this morning so let's try a little bit of this with a cracker i think you're going to really like this all right let's give it a try oh wow that is really good and it is really sweet but from the cherry tomatoes it doesn't surprise me so good all right let's move on to everything else so the rest of these three we're really just going to get set up so we can try them for you right we're going to be doing poultry broth which is you guys you could use this as bouillon it's actually it's going to be awesome right but has all the benefits of homemade bone broth right it's really nice to have you can actually buy bone broth powder but it's pretty darn expensive right so making it yourself is a big plus we've got some pico de gallo in here which we're gonna try raw and we're gonna reconstitute some for the dip with the crackers and then we also have some of the green beans from our garden which we're gonna try raw also but then rehydrate all right here we go look at this i mean they look just like green beans and to be honest they taste exactly like a fresh green bean they're crunchy they've got all of the flavor of eating one right out of the garden but they're super light and it's really kind of strange how fresh they taste but we also want to try some reconstituted so i'm going to put some in the bowl here and to be honest this way we haven't really tried them before so we're going to put them in there package these back up and then we're also going to do the same thing with the pico de gallo you guys see that down inside the bag if you guys could smell that it smells so good we're gonna put some of that in our bowl as well and i think i remember when sarah made this that she told me to be careful that it was really spicy so all right so i'm going to try the pico de gallo just the way it is without adding any water back to it first so i'll just give it a little and it's got all the flavors of pico de gallo a little chewy i mean i don't think i would just eat it that way all the time but it is it is kind of nice i mean it it's definitely got all of the fresh flavors which is always the strangest part of the freeze-dried stuff is just how fresh it tastes all right i'm gonna add some of the boiling water to our green beans [Music] i don't really think we can add too much because i think they'll just soak up what they need so i'm gonna put quite a bit in there and then to the pico i'm gonna try to not go overboard here because we don't want that to be too watery [Music] i'm going to let both of these sit for about 10 minutes and then we'll come back and we'll give them a try in the meantime i think sarah is going to get the poultry broth going well i want to show you guys what that poultry broth looks like inside there it's it's super fluffy i know you can't tell that from here i'm just gonna pour some of this into this cup and i'm going to add some water too now an entire quart of broth was in that container maybe i'll add one more [Music] i'm going to stir that around and let that rehydrate now when i make broth i don't add any salt because when i'm using it in my cooking i want to control the amount of salt in my cooking so i am going to add a little bit of salt to this because i'm going to drink it and i think it will taste nice with a little bit of salt in there it really rehydrates like a dream it's almost like they're kind of like crystals almost when you dehydrate it let me taste it oh my gosh you guys it's so good it's just like poultry broth just like chicken broth so good can you look inside of there so good so this is a huge space saver for me because over the course of the year i can gallons and gallons of broth i will continue to can broth because i really do like having some on the shelf but when i but when i get to a point where i don't want to add any more jars i'm going to start freeze drying it more and more so i can just have that shelf stable for a long term storage i absolutely love it this is a winner all right these have been sitting for about 10 or 15 minutes it's time to give these a try let's start with the green beans i'm gonna try one first they're much chewier than a fresh green bean yes they're not crunchy like they would be out of the garden they're a little more rubbery than they would be fresh but i think these would be really good in soups things where you're going to kind of cook them down anyway right the flavor is exactly like a fresh absolutely right the flavor is exactly like a green bean the texture for me is more like when you heat up frozen green beans right yeah that's exactly what it's like it's like when you just thaw out uh frozen green beans yeah but the flavor is exactly like fresh right all right let's try the pico de gallo because pico de gallo is always fresh i mean it's something that i eat so let's give that a try i'm i know how spicy this is so i'm not going to go overboard now that is very good flavor's so good right again not exactly the same texture as fresh like a little more soft right but excellent the flavor is really good and it's spicy it is spicy but the flavor is very very good i would do this so i would say both of these are definite winners this pico de gallo i think is a much more like fresh than the green beans are but the flavor on both of them is is perfect it's spot-on now you guys the freeze dryer has been an amazing addition to our homestead we're so glad that we have one we'll continue to use it over and over again we have learned some things though that don't do well in the freeze dryer right some things that you guys have asked right have asked us why don't you do this or why don't you do that right some of these things have been because we've experienced it ourselves and others we've just learned and read what doesn't do well in a freeze dryer so the main thing is things that are super oily or fatty like butter bacon fat um anything that's super oily like we wouldn't be able to put in our pesto because the oil wouldn't wouldn't come out of it it wouldn't freeze dry out of it now you could freeze dry all of the other parts of the pesto minus the oil and then add the oil when you take it out and mix it up that way and it'll be perfect right other things that don't really do very well are super sugary or thick types of sugary things like honey syrup because those things all have a low water content to begin with right and the whole point of freeze drying is that you're taking all of the water all the moisture out well those things don't have a lot of moisture in the first place right so there's nothing to really take out so i was hoping to be able to freeze dry like coffee creamer so i tried half cream and half milk so half and half it didn't work it got really gummy uh it was just too heavy right because the cream is all fat right i mean that's what cream is so the milk does well right but not the cream too much fat too heavy so those are some of the things that we have learned just don't work well but you guys in general we are so happy with the freeze dryer we absolutely would get one again uh if we had the opportunity i mean it it will be something that we'll use for a long long time and if it's something you guys are interested in we will leave a link uh in the video description so you guys can check them out yeah i think it's a great addition to just about any homestead you guys so we hope that you enjoyed our video today and hope that you learned something we hope that if you had questions about the freeze dryer that we touched on a lot of those topics today if you're enjoying videos like this make sure that you hit the subscribe button below and as always really the best way you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 295,813

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: NHUACES765s

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021