Yesterday the shredded chicken finished up in the freeze dryer. Start to finish, it took 44 hours, 48 minutes. I’m still working on clearing out some freezer space. I took out four packages of chicken breasts and defrosted those. Each package had two huge breasts, four were boneless, skinless and two had bones and skin. I put them all in the pressure cooker with onions, celery and carrots; cooked them, shredded them after they cooled.
I strained the broth and canned it. The 8 chicken breasts filled three half gallon jars. The broth filled three quarts and one pint. Not bad and it left me with a bit more space in the freezer.
As soon as the freeze dryer defrosted, I put in three trays of onions and one tray of mushrooms. Not even sure what goes in next but I’ll come up with something.
Rebecca L says
Seeing the jars of broth makes me wonder if you could freeze dry it and use it in your dry soup mixes?
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Yes, people do but it takes forever. You end up with probably less than 1/4 cup of powder from a whole tray. For my soup mixes, I just add store bought powdered broth.
Rebecca L says
That is a bad return on investment! Anyway, you keep things in jars anyway, so the “fresh” chicken broth is just heavier and bigger and so much easier.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Yes and I forgot to mention that people who dry it will cook it down on the stove til it’s very “dehydrated”, then put it in the freeze dryer. It would be so much nicer to have it powdered – I think about 10 quarts might be 1/8th of a cup, but we go through so much of it, that I don’t see that it’s worth it.