Tips on Freeze Drying Vegetables
Last Thursday, we had another wonderful time listening to Daren Jensen teach us best practices for freeze drying vegetables. As a chef and master at freeze drying, Daren has the skill and know-how to get the best results out of every freeze-drying experience.
The first step that Daren emphasizes in any freeze-drying endeavor is to decide what you want to do with the product at the end of the process. What you plan to do with the food will determine how you prepare it for the freeze dryer. For instance, if you’re freeze drying carrots to be used in a chicken noodle soup, you want to cut the carrots very thin, because they are going to take longer to cook than any of the other ingredients in the soup . If you’re freeze drying them to be used later in a stew, they can be cut bigger, as stews take longer to cook and other ingredients in the stew cook as long as carrots do. Another tip on cutting is to be sure that for each batch going into the freeze dryer, everything is cut in uniform sizes so they will dry evenly.
Daren also focuses on the importance of washing the produce, and blanching it. Blanching vegetables inhibits enzyme growth. It softens, or partially cooks the vegetables. And it changes the molecular structure of the sugars. He talks about the strength of the chemical bond between water and sugar molecules, and how freeze drying works better after the produce has been blanched, weakening that bond.
After going through the basics, Daren opened it up for participants’ questions about drying vegetables, going through about a dozen different vegetables and specific tips on them, and giving the participants advice for their individual scenarios. In this way, we learned a lot from others and their experiences, and how Daren would finesse their processes to get a better product. One of the favorite tips that Daren shared was that you can freeze dry cooked rice on the freeze dryer’s candy setting. The train of talk that led to that tidbit probably can’t be recreated, but it was an exciting discovery for most everyone there!
As always, this class was engaging, educational, and empowering. We look forward to having Daren back on Thursday, September 11th at 11:00 am for another great freeze drying class! This class will be focused on freeze drying meals and casseroles. So mark your calendars and bring your friends!
