Watch this BEFORE you get a freeze dryer!

i've had my harvest right freeze dryer for a little over a year and a half now and the other day a friend asked me are you as excited about your freeze dryer now as you were when you first got it and my answer actually surprised me and i don't think you're going to believe what i did next a little over a year and a half ago harvest right the only producer of home level freeze dryers contacted josh and i and asked us if we would take a freeze dryer in exchange for doing some videos showing people how to use a freeze dryer being the resourceful homesteaders that we are we said yes but let them know that any videos that we did would be honest reviews on the product and that whether we like the machine or not we would be telling people about that and so this is my year and a half later review on my freeze dryer now i've got to tell you guys when they first contacted me i was not very excited about the idea of a freeze dryer i actually felt like it was a little gimmicky people have survived just fine without freeze dryers for thousands and thousands of years and they've managed to preserve their food just fine you know combined with the cost it is an expensive machine the amount of time it takes to run a single batch it takes between 24 and 36 hours most of the time to run a single batch of food in here of the noise and the size of the machine i mean this thing's just about like a dishwasher it's a small dishwasher here and another appliance to run i really wasn't that excited about it so i went into this experiment pretty skeptical about the whole thing and thinking that i wasn't going to end up liking it very much and then i started using it and i completely changed my mind first off i started fruit and i was completely blown away by the quality of the fruit that i was able to freeze dry it actually changed my entire food preserving theory when it comes to fruit because i no longer had to preserve fruit in a way that added a lot of sugar in order to make it last long you've got jams and jellies you have things like fruit rolls and roll-ups you have dehydrated fruit you have frozen fruit and of those the only things that actually turn out really good without some sort of added sugar even if it's other fruit sugars is the frozen fruit but let's be real who has time or freezer space to flash freeze gallons and gallons of raspberries and strawberries and huckleberries and all these things that i'm bringing in from the garden or the surrounding forests and so by having the freeze dryer all of a sudden i had this great method of preserving fruit everybody loved the results and we could use it in so many different ways then i went to preserving vegetables in the freeze dryer and i was completely amazed at the way they rehydrated and tasted almost like garden fresh they are way better than most canned vegetables way better than frozen vegetables i was really really pleased with the freeze-dried results of the vegetables now i tried meat a few times but honestly i don't really use that very much i like canned meat or frozen meat so that's usually what we use but another place that the freeze dryer really stood out as i started using it is with the whole meals i could make a double batch of dinner and i could put just the leftovers of whatever dinner i had i didn't have to make a special recipe i didn't have to do anything fancy and i could put it right on my freeze dryer trays and slide them in push a few buttons and i had a meal that was ready to grab and go or to preserve or to keep on my shelf for a couple years as backup food like it made the meals so incredibly easy and i was able to start stocking up on more convenience food than i have the time to do if i'm canning so am i as excited about the freeze dryer now as i was a year and a half ago oh yeah in fact i am way way more excited about it and i'm loving being in the middle of another preserving year with the freeze dryer in fact i love it so much that we've actually just purchased our own second unit because of our large family we have about 13 people at our table every single meal we grow and we preserve a lot of food and so i keep this thing running pretty much constantly right now and i need a second one so we've just bought a second one that's how much i love it is it's totally worth it to me to go ahead and get another unit [Music] as much as i love my freeze dryer there are a few things that i wish that i had known before we got the first freeze dryer these are things i see a lot of questions about but maybe not a whole lot of answers about so i wanted to go over a few of them first of all is the size this is a large unit and it holds five trays in it i highly recommend that unless you're just a single person that you get the largest machine that you can possibly afford save up a little bit longer and get the larger size five trays are great but they're smaller than regular cookie sheets so that gives you a little bit of context of how much you can freeze dry at the same time and you're gonna have a lot better results time wise for your energy and your efficiency if you freeze dry larger batches less often than if you go with the smaller batches so get the biggest machine that you can afford one of the other things that surprised us when we first got it is that while this runs on 110 it does need its own dedicated circuit so we did have to actually have an electrician come out and make that get that all set up correctly so that we have a dedicated 110 circuit for this machine another thing that i wish that i'd known before i received the first freeze dryer was the setup that i'd need space wise now you need to have room for more than just the freeze dryer itself so we have the freeze dryer here which is fairly large it needs to have room to have the pump right next to it we have the premium oiliest pump and it sits right here but the other thing that you really need to know is that there is a draining feature of this every time the freeze dryer runs some ice builds up on the inside of the unit and when you've finished that food that you have in the freeze dryer you do what's called a defrost cycle where it melts that ice turns it into water so we can get it out of the machine well that water has to drain somewhere so you need to have a multi-layer set up here where you can have the hose drain and a bucket or a sink or something to drain this into so that it properly drains all the way we just have the hose coming out of the back of it right into a bucket and i just dump that bucket every single time we do a different batch in the freeze dryer while we're talking about setup the other thing that would be really good to know is that you do want to have your machine somewhere where you can check it regularly i've heard of people putting it in out buildings and kind of away from their house and while sometimes that's the only option we have it isn't an ideal setup the reason for this is is i have had batches that have not properly vacuum sealed and if i wasn't nearby to be able to check on it i wouldn't have known that and it would have ruined the entire batch there's multiple reasons for not achieving a vacuum seal in your machine but for me almost all the time it's been some silly problem like something getting in the way physically actually getting in the way so it can't seal down so i haven't had the problem often but when i have i've been really glad that i'm close by and i can hear the little alarm on the machine when it's having a problem so keep it somewhere close by now let's talk about what i wish i knew about running the actual batches in the machine any individual batch can take between 24 and 48 hours depending on the liquid content in your food that you're freeze drying the good news about that is that the machine will hold your food when it's all the way done at negative 40 degrees fahrenheit and celsius until you're ready to remove them from the machine so that does mean you can let it finish overnight and not have to get up in the middle of the night to deal with it you can let it just sit until the next morning in order to cut down on that batch time though which is important if you want to be really efficient with your machine it's best if you can pre-freeze all of the food before you put it into the freeze dryer that cuts down on the batch time drastically now the challenge with this is finding a setup in your freezer that will work especially for talking about liquids and will keep your trays level while it's freezing there's some interesting plans online in order to be able to do this in the freezer and build little racks into an upright freezer and i'm working on that myself but i haven't gotten to that level yet so what i do right now is i do my best to pre-freeze as much food as i can especially the more solid food that's not so apt to tip and spill in the freezer and then i just do longer batches of the liquid foods and it works out great if you're really getting efficient the best idea would be to have a set up for pre-freezing your trays in the freezer and have an extra set of trays so that one can be in the freezer while another set is in the freeze dryer working and then you're ready to swap them out and get another set right into the freeze dryer i thought that sounded ridiculous when i first started learning about freeze drying because i thought oh who's gonna babysit their freeze dryer that much yeah when you fall in love with your freeze dryer you might start running that many batches that you're trying to figure out how to get every bit of uh efficiency out of it so you can run more batches one of the things i wish i had known before i got a freeze dryer and something i've seen a lot of questions on was how loud it would be when it was running i have the premium pump the premium oil pump and that's the part that really makes the most noise and it is listed as being the quieter pump but it isn't that quiet now for me i have this down in a basement space away from our regular living space so it works out just fine it's absolutely fine for us but if this were just off my kitchen or in a place that i had to hear it all day long i think i would think it was a little too loud for everyday comfort so here's what i love the absolute most about the freeze dryer first of all it's the ease of preserving food you literally put the food on the tray you stick it in the machine you push about two buttons and you're done you don't even have to mess with it again while it's in process you just have to keep an ear out for the signal or the alarm on the machine i love this it is so much easier than any other food preserving that i do once your batch is done you just remove it and get it into your long-term freezer containers then you push a few more buttons do a defrost cycle on your machine and you're ready to use your machine all over again so it's super easy and it makes preserving in the height of summer or fall just super fast it's so easy i really really like it the other thing i really like is the ease of preparation with the food that you freeze dry freeze-dried food is different than something like a dehydrated food that takes a long time to rehydrate a canned food which is different than its fresh form when you go to open it or a frozen food which you have to defrost and it's different from its fresh form another thing i love is the flexibility in the eating of the food that's been freezed right now a lot of food that has been freeze dried can be eaten just the way it is without rehydrating and it is absolutely delicious that would be things like your fruit some of your veggies they make great snacks some foods like pizza when they've been freeze dried pizza slices turn it into a phenomenal snacks so it makes a really good way to just eat the food plain and be able to have really healthy options for snacking the kids absolutely love freeze-dried fruit it is amazing flavor and tastes just like fresh even when it's freeze-dried but the other thing that i really like about it is that it's easy to either rehydrate your food or to just toss the different ingredients into something you're already cooking for example we freeze dry a lot of berries i love freeze-dried berries they taste amazing just the way they are but they re-hydrate really well and you can just take a couple handfuls of freeze-dried berries and not do anything to them and toss them into batters for pancakes or for muffins you can put them right into your morning oatmeal and they rehydrate just fine in a matter of minutes right there in the food the batter itself so it makes it really really flexible for being able to use it another thing i absolutely love about freeze-dried food is the flavor it is better than any other preserved food with maybe the exception of fermented foods it is just tastes just like fresh it tastes like fresh right off the vine if that's the way you pick the food and it holds that flavor in better than any other preservation method that i know i love the nutrition and that flavor that is so bright and so strong still so delicious really stands for all the nutrients that are in the food that's those nutrients coming out in a lot of density and you can taste it it's so good i love being able to feed my family that nutrient-dense food at a time of the year when we probably wouldn't have it because we don't have fresh things growing in the garden the last thing that i absolutely love about the freeze dryer is the length of time that the foods can be freeze dried and stored they can sit in storage in a nutrient dense manner for 20 to 25 years and that's really exciting now i don't know about you but i have no intention of storing food for 25 years even if it can last that long but the exciting part of it is that we all know if you're gardening if you're going to the farmer's market regularly there are good years and there are bad years for each type of crop out there and to be able to take one type of food when you have an excess of it and to preserve it in a way that's going to last nutrient dense for a long period of time to kind of hedge against that next year when it might not be a great apple year a great tomato year or whatever it is is a great way to go if you are serious about food preservation then i highly highly recommend getting yourself a freeze dryer i completely believe that it is worth every penny and that it's going to pay for itself actually really quickly in the amount of food that you're going to be able to preserve easily and you'll be able to put up extra food food's only getting more expensive so what you can put away right now is going to save you money for the future you guys this is my completely honest review i absolutely love it and i'm so glad that i have one so if you're still not sure about the difference between freeze-dried foods and dehydrated foods check out this video right here

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 552,803

Keywords: Homesteading, Homesteading Family, harvest right freeze dryer, freeze dried food, freeze drying, harvest right, harvestright freeze dryer, harvest right freeze dryer review, freeze dryer, food storage, freeze dryer review, harvestright.com freeze dryer, harvest right freeze dryer noise, freeze dryer machine, harvest right oilless pump, home freeze drying, freeze dryer harvest right, freeze drying food, harvest right freeze dryer sizes, harvest right freeze dryer setup

Id: vNqSpuExyhQ

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022