I have never freeze dried elderberries and I’m hoping it works! I just stuck two trays of elderberries, one tray of dehydrated goji berries and one tray of “dried” blueberries in the freeze dryer.
This morning the freezer dryer finished a load – two trays of sliced apples except one tray had a few tablespoons of dried milk kefir grains, one tray of “dried” cherries and one tray of squash. As I suspected, the cherries were too sweet and stayed sticky so they got divided up into 6 vacuum bags, sealed and placed in the freezer. The apples filled 7 pint jars and the squash filled one quart jar.
I very rarely let the automatic defrost cycle run but it’s fast – two hours and the freeze dryer is ready for the next load. Otherwise, to let it defrost on its own would take at least 8 hours. But, the next few weeks, I’ll need the freeze dryer running non-stop so I did auto defrost this morning.
The same thing that happened with the cherries may happen with the blueberries. I had ordered both the cherries and blueberries and was hoping for a longer term freezing solution and it didn’t work out so I won’t order more of cherries and will wait to see what happens with the blueberries. Vince found 8 oz. bags of goji berries at the pallet store for $3.00 each (regular price was almost $11) and bought about 20 bags of them. They’re “gently dried” and he’d like them to be crunchy so I’m trying those in the freeze dryer. Since they aren’t sticky sweet, they may work.
In order to freeze dry fresh blueberries, every blueberry needs to be punctured with a pin or a skewer. The skin is thick enough that the freeze dryer apparently doesn’t suck the liquid out of them so if I freeze dry blueberries, I kinda mash them with a potato masher – not pretty but I am not sitting and poking a hole in every blueberry. I was concerned that elderberries might be the same way but I’ve found several websites, as well as youtube videos so I think the elderberries will freeze dry fine. I hope so since I kinda have an overload of them right now.
Now, I’m going to sit and cross stitch for an hour or so, then get started on pear preserves.