Freeze drying
The first time I learned about a freeze dryer was here on Hive. I forgot the name of the account (sorry) but I read some posts about processing food in a freeze dryer and I was intrigued. Then I forgot about the whole thing for a while until Instagram pushed me some of these accounts sharing their stories and kids trying these foods with different textures after being freeze dried and then liking it. Ideal, so I thought!
My daughter is the queen of rejection when it comes to bad texture. What bad is, is often not clear and changes but it's been a journey with her and eating things. My boyfriend is sick of drinking so much coffee for the sake of having something to drink and I thought ok, maybe I can fix that by creating powder from fresh foods and adding it to water instead of buying lemonades in store. The current status is that he's drinking apple cider vinegar daily and he starts to love it (I don't get that, it's gross, lol). More power to him though as it really helps with his stomach issues, yet the "lack of tasty drinks" remains.
In the future
I want to have a proper freeze dryer, with that I mean a solid one, not one of the budget models as I already foresee issues before I started using the budget one I ordered. But my head was getting dizzy from all the options out there in the budget from 60 to 100 euros, which was the max amount I set for this first experience in freeze drying.
It's actual dehydrating and not freeze drying with these budget models so I read, which is fine btw, it will give me some insights and for now, it's good enough. I first want to experience how much I will actually use it and if I really see the benefits of the machine as I expected all along. Sometimes things are a hit and miss so I did not want to put a higher budget on this thing for the time being. Maybe next year I will.
My plan
Is to start with the easiest part, slice up fruits and dehydrate them, put them in glass jars so we can make lemonade or tea with them. When I find I have enough of one fruit to make powder from, I will try out the first fruit and see if that powder is what I expected from it, I read it doesn't work well with every fruit so I will have to test the waters. Hopefully, I will not ruin any fruit by trial and error as it can get expensive that way.
Powdered milk is another thing on my list, but not right away. Since we drink a type of coffee milk powder which is currently only available if I pay a premium shipping fee on top of the premium prices of these bottles, so my boyfriend tried condensed milk (hates it because of the sweetness and his stomach gets upset from it) and now a tiny bottle of coffee milk (the only one I found so far and doesn't last more than a day, maybe 2 (read: even more expensive).
I want to see if I can make a proper milk powder in the near future by freeze drying it. This could save us tons of money on the milk as well as the shipping for it, but first let's process the fruit tomorrow when the machine arrives and the milk is for when I understand how it works properly.
The great thing is that I got my daughter excited to try all these things when I showed her some Insta reels so I'm hopeful that soon I can add some healthy "fruit chips" to her diet for example.
Will update soon...
All pictures used in the header are from Canva Pro.