The Approach of Freeze-Drying
Freeze-drying is a complicated method of preserving new or already-cooked foodstuff by taking away up to ninety eight% of the food’s humidity, leaving intact the food’s texture, taste, aroma and dietary value.
The procedure needs that the refreshing or cooked foodstuff be swiftly frozen at temperatures as reduced as -50°C. The frozen food is then positioned into a vacuum chamber. This vacuum chamber lowers the force, and raises the temperature to just about 0°C.
At this specific temperature and stress, the ice crystals in the foods evaporate into h2o vapor, bypassing water’s liquid type, via a approach referred to as sublimation.
This approach preserves the cell composition and nutritional articles of the foodstuff, resulting in a merchandise that, when rehydrated, extremely carefully resembles the original food.
Brunch helps prevent the water from becoming reabsorbed by the food and hence decreases its weight drastically.
Most foods products this kind of as fruits, veggies and meats are well-suited to freeze-drying, and can be used for long-term meals storage and preservation.
The Method of Dehydration
Dehydrating food is a foodstuff preservation approach which has been utilized for hundreds of years. Native Americans dehydrated their buffalo kills in their looking camps to make it easier to transport. Pemmican (a dehydrated concoction of buffalo meat combined with body fat and berries) was a staple of several of the nomadic North American tribes. This reduced-warmth dehydration approach involved both air drying (with nearby campfires), or sun drying strips of meat on drying racks.
Dehydrators are a contemporary approach for slowly and gradually removing the moisture from meals with out actually cooking it. A drawback of dehydration is the limited amount of food which can be dried at one particular time. The good facet of dehydration is that this strategy of processing for foods storage can be effortlessly accomplished at residence.
How Do These Two Methods Affect the Foods?
Freeze-dried foodstuff protect much of the original shade, shape, aroma and freshness of fruits, greens and meats. Freeze-dried foods does not normally incorporate additives or preservatives, so it stays real to its unique form. And the seem, texture and flavor of the food continues to be soon after re-hydration.
Not like reduced-heat dehydration, freeze-drying enables for the preservation of pre-cooked meals, including recipes such as soups, stews, stroganoff, and the like. An clear reward is that because the meal was well prepared in its entirety prior to freeze-drying, all you require to do is simply incorporate h2o, then heat for a number of minutes in get to create sumptuous foods.
Rehydrating freeze-dried foods will take just a few minutes, simply by incorporating boiling drinking water. Some meals, like several fruits and greens, want no re-hydration before eating.
Dehydrated meals shrink throughout processing as the humidity is taken out. So the food item by itself is considerably more compact than its first dimensions.
The re-hydration time of dehydrated foodstuff requires a bit lengthier than freeze-dried, but it stills tastes like the original form of the foods. Some dehydrated food items contain extra elements to increase flavors or help in preservation. As with freeze-dried fruits and veggies, dehydrated fruits and vegetables can be eaten with out any re-hydration.
Both methods of foodstuff preservation increase the extended-expression storage daily life of foodstuff. Most commercially produced freeze-dried and dehydrated meals have a shelf lifestyle of fifteen to twenty several years, if properly packaged and stored in a awesome, dry environment.
In addition to their becoming a reliable source of foods in an crisis or prolonged-phrase survival situation, because of their light-weight excess weight and ease of portability, these meals are also wonderful for having on tenting, hiking and looking journeys. They are also a wise option to keep in an crisis road-facet package for the auto, or in your bug out bag.
If you select to maintain these meals in your car as element of an emergency package, you should bear in mind to rotate them periodically. Temperatures in a auto can reach extremes, equally scorching and cold. High warmth as well as steady temperature fluctuations lead to faster degradation of each dehydrated and freeze-dried foods.
Which Variety is Far better for Use?
Absolutely everyone is diverse, and each and every individual has their possess personal preferences and tastes. With that in head, there are a few factors to take into account ahead of generating a determination between freeze-dried or dehydrated meals.
House-grown fruits and greens are far better preserved through dehydration, considering that the average particular person can’t manage the costly machinery utilized in freeze-drying.
Meals used in daily cooking and meal planning need to almost certainly be freeze-dried. This permits the foods to be swiftly re-hydrated as it is cooked prior to serving. If accessibility and portability are critical, than possibly type of preserved meals need to satisfy those certain needs. As soon as once again, it’s a matter of individual choices.
In a nutshell, equally dehydrated and freeze-dried meals are excellent selections for lengthy-term foodstuff storage, as effectively as for day-to-day use or for mountaineering, camping, and many others. They each provide light-weight-weight, moveable, practical foodstuff. The main distinction is that freeze-dried food items tend to far better preserve the condition, texture and flavors of the unique meals.
Most people will uncover that a blend will work greatest for their needs. Solitary-merchandise food items this sort of as greens, potatoes, and other staples and grains are effectively-suited to minimal-warmth dehydration. Freeze-drying is more suitable for meats and fruits (whose texture can be preserved), and for pre-cooked foods with a range of components such as soups, stews and sauces.