Friday night as soon as Vince had the freeze dryer pump hooked up, I stuck the loads in that had been in the freezer waiting for the new pump. It took 43 hours to complete the cycle.
That’s one half gallon jar and one pint jar of the ground beef pucks. They’re actually for when I need to give the dogs a pill. I’ll re-constitute one in water, lightly cook it and stick a pill in it. I’m also thinking I could season the ground beef for meatballs, use the same Souper Cube (cookie tray) and make meatball pucks. I will rehydrate one of the pucks for the dogs and see if it will hold the shape of a meatball. I think it will. How nice would it be to have a bunch of freeze dried almost ready meatballs in jars? Pretty nice!
The half gallon jars of eggs holds 3 dozen eggs. I can put 1-1/2 dozen large eggs or 2 dozen small eggs on each tray. The front left small jars was a bit of rosemary. There was a little space left on one tray of meat pucks – maybe 3″ so I ran out and cut some rosemary, rinsed it off and stuck it in the freeze dryer.
After all the food is removed, I can hit the “defrost” button on the freeze dryer and it will heat up, melt the ice and within a couple of hours, I can start another batch. I rarely do the auto defrost . . I think I’ve used it twice in the eight years I’ve been freeze drying. It takes maybe four to six hours for it to defrost on its own. Usually I leave it overnight and start a new batch in the morning but I’ve gotten a bit stacked up by having the machine not working for a week.
I had another load in the freezer and got it going last night before I went to bed. There’s one whole tray of sliced leeks. The remainder of the trays have bits and pieces of several things I needed to make dry soup mixes. We use a lot of these during the winter and we’re getting low. On one freeze dryer tray, I have chopped tomatoes (from the grocery store because I am out of chopped freeze dried tomatoes from the garden!), chopped celery, chopped onion. Another tray has diced potatoes and carrots that I blanched, parsley and frozen peas. Another tray has frozen corn, bell pepper and jalapeno peppers.
Today I will dice up some raw chicken breasts that I got out yesterday to defrost, brown it a bit and get it in the freezer to be frozen and ready when the current load is ready to come out of the freeze dryer. I will will be able to add water and use it to add to the soup made from dry soup mixes, cook it up a bit more for chicken salad, most anything that calls for diced chicken. I should be able to fill all four trays with the chicken I have out.
I’m hoping we don’t get ice and lose power with a load in the freeze dryer and a load in the freezer waiting to go into the freeze dryer.
Of course, I’ll report back on everything as it’s done.
Jimi says
You are so blessed to have the ability to have such a great set up. Here in OKC would have to air the shed or garage and so far hubby is not buying into that idea. Thanks for sharing and one day maybe but probably not I will get one.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
And, you really need water/sink/soap nearby. In Texas, when we built the sewing room, we had built two 8′ x 16′ closets. I ended up putting the freeze dryer in one of those closets but we had not put a bathroom or water in the sewing room so I had to take everything back and forth to the house. I would prepare the trays in the kitchen, get them loaded and walk them over to the sewing room. I would bring the clean jars over to the sewing room to get them loaded with the freeze dried food. It’s so nice having it inside the house but, you’re right – the freeze dryer does need to be in a climate controlled room.
EDIT: I wrote all that meaning to say . . no matter what we THINK we need when we buy or build a house, there’s always something that comes up that we wish we had known before we bought or built the house. When we moved back to MO, I had the freeze dryer and knew I needed a place for that so, yes, I have a good setup but as we have started looking for another house, I realize how perfect this house is for us.