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Feb 26, 2024 · With a bit of prep and some patience, you can freeze-dry everything from meat to vegetables to candy and extend their shelf life for years. 1. Mistake: Using big chunks of food. One of the biggest mistakes in the freeze-drying game is cutting your food into pieces that are too big.
- Jessica A. Scott
Jan 9, 2024 · Most freeze dried fruits, vegetables, prepared foods, and cooked meats can last 20-30 years if properly stored in airtight containers at cool temperatures. Once rehydrated, they should be eaten within a few days.
- Overview
- What is freeze-drying?
- Are freeze-dried foods healthy?
- Foods that can be freeze-dried
- Potential downsides of freeze-drying
- Can you freeze-dry foods at home?
- The bottom line
Freeze-drying, also known as lyophilization, is a form of dehydration. Food is first frozen, then dried under pressure to remove its water content.
It is widely believed that freeze-drying is the best method of drying. As such, it is a common practice in the food and pharmaceutical industries (1).
In fact, from ready-to-eat meals to fruits or snacks, you may easily find a wide range of freeze-dried foods in your local supermarket.
This article further explains what freeze-drying is and whether it is healthy or not.
Freeze-drying or lyophilization is a dehydration technique based on the sublimation of water in a product (1, 2).
This means that the product’s water content transitions from a solid to a gaseous state — or from ice to vapor — without going through the liquid state (1).
Freeze-drying is considered a high quality dehydration method for a couple of reasons, including (1, 2):
•it operates at low temperatures, which contributes to preserving a product’s nutritional value, taste, appearance, and heat-sensitive compounds
Freeze-dried foods are a healthy food choice. In fact, freeze-drying is one of the most common dehydration methods due to its numerous benefits.
Freeze-drying is one of the best ways to retain the activity of beneficial plant compounds, such as phytochemicals, and nutrients while preserving color, flavor, and structure. That’s why it’s widely used to produce high-value food products (3, 5, 6).
For instance, studies show that compared with other drying methods, freeze-drying is the most effective at retaining antioxidants, such as anthocyanins, flavonoids, and ascorbic acid or vitamin C (3, 7).
Antioxidants are beneficial compounds that help fight off the damaging effects of oxidative stress in your body. They’re also the compounds behind most fruit and vegetables’ health benefits (7, 8).
However, while freeze-drying may sometimes even increase a fruit’s phytochemical concentration, the opposite may also be true, depending on the fruit (3).
Additionally, given that decreased water activity inhibits the growth of most bacteria, yeasts, and molds, by removing a product’s water content, freeze-drying helps prolong a food’s shelf life (2, 4, 5).
Freeze-dried foods are often used for hiking, camping, space exploration, emergency and survival applications, and military rations. They are preferred over regular foods due to their light weight, long shelf life, portability, and ease of preparation (9).
While plant-based foods are the most popular freeze-dried products, a wide range of foods can be preserved using this method.
Here’s a list of some of the foods that can be freeze-dried (3, 5, 9):
•Fruits: strawberries, apples, blackberries, bananas, pears, oranges, and fruit puree
•Vegetables: almost all vegetables, such as carrots, asparagus, mushrooms, peppers, pumpkin, and tomatoes
•Meats: beef, fish, chicken, eggs, pork, turkey, and shrimp
Freeze-drying makes an excellent food preservation method. However, there are some potential downsides to consider.
First, while reducing a product’s water availability diminishes microbial growth, disease-causing microorganisms in raw meat or eggs can survive the drying process and remain present during storage. They can cause foodborne illness if eaten without cooking (4).
Foods can be freeze-dried either cooked or raw. If you freeze-dry raw meat or eggs, you will have to label it properly and cook it before eating (10).
Second, despite preserving foods’ antioxidant content, the high porosity of freeze-dried products allows easy access to oxygen, which may lead to higher levels of oxidation or degradation of bioactive compounds (2, 7).
Summary
Freeze-drying doesn’t kill all bacteria present in raw food. Thus, you must cook raw foods before freeze-drying to avoid foodborne illness. The high porosity of freeze-dried foods may lead to greater degradation of nutrients.
Freeze-drying requires specialized and often expensive equipment that works under a specific temperature and pressure.
Freeze-drying should not be attempted without proper equipment and training.
Summary
Freeze-drying is a process requiring specialized equipment, and is not safe to try without it.
Freeze-drying is a way of dehydrating frozen food via a process that transforms ice into vapor, also known as sublimation.
It is a healthy food preservation method, as it retains most of the beneficial plant compounds and nutrients in foods, as well as their color, taste, and appearance.
However, it doesn’t kill harmful bacteria. Therefore, you should thoroughly cook freeze-dried raw foods like meat or eggs.
Freeze-drying requires special equipment. If you do not have a home freeze-drying machine, do not attempt to freeze-dry foods.
You can freeze dry most foods including fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, fish, eggs, desserts, full meals, candy, and even pet food. Freeze-drying works by removing moisture (water) from foods, this means that oil-based foods don’t freeze-dry well.
- Colton Blair
Jul 14, 2021 · Using the correct settings ensures that your food will be fully freeze-dried and that your machine won’t be working harder than it should. If you pre-freeze your food make sure you press the pre-frozen button so your freeze-dryer can reach the appropriate tempurature.
- Barb Hudson
Aug 16, 2022 · It is ok to freeze dry different types of food at the same time, but be careful when mixing strong flavors, especially onions, garlic, and other spices. Freeze dried food tends to take on the flavor of whatever is in your batch — onion-flavored ice cream doesn’t sound good.
People also ask
What foods can be freeze dry?
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Is freeze-drying the best method of drying food?
Aug 6, 2024 · Cooked or raw, from single fruits to entire meals, freeze-drying offers food preparation options you can’t get anywhere else. I’ll start at the top of the list with one of the most popular freeze-dried foods: fruit! Fruits are excellent sources of vitamins and fiber, and they’re delicious too.
