The Method of Freeze-Drying
Freeze-drying is a intricate process of preserving refreshing or previously-cooked meals by taking away up to 98% of the food’s moisture, leaving intact the food’s texture, flavor, aroma and dietary benefit.
The process demands that the new or cooked food be speedily frozen at temperatures as lower as -50°C. The frozen food is then put into a vacuum chamber. This vacuum chamber lowers the stress, and raises the temperature to just about 0°C.
At this particular temperature and stress, the ice crystals in the foods evaporate into water vapor, bypassing water’s liquid form, by way of a procedure named sublimation.
This process preserves the mobile composition and nutritional material of the meals, ensuing in a item that, when rehydrated, very closely resembles the first foodstuff.
The method also prevents the water from currently being reabsorbed by the foods and therefore decreases its weight substantially.
Most foods objects such as fruits, veggies and meats are nicely-suited to freeze-drying, and can be employed for lengthy-expression food storage and preservation.
The Method of Dehydration
Dehydrating meals is a foodstuff preservation strategy which has been used for hundreds of years. Native Us citizens dehydrated their buffalo kills in their looking camps to make it less complicated to transport. Pemmican (a dehydrated concoction of buffalo meat mixed with body fat and berries) was a staple of a lot of of the nomadic North American tribes. This lower-heat dehydration method involved both air drying (with close by campfires), or solar drying strips of meat on drying racks.
Dehydrators are a contemporary approach for little by little getting rid of the humidity from meals with out truly cooking it. A downside of dehydration is the minimal amount of meals which can be dried at one particular time. The optimistic element of dehydration is that this technique of processing for foods storage can be simply done at home.
How Do These Two Approaches Affect the Foods?
Freeze-dried foods protect considerably of the authentic shade, condition, aroma and freshness of fruits, vegetables and meats. Freeze-dried foods does not typically include additives or preservatives, so it remains correct to its first form. And the seem, texture and flavor of the foods continues to be following re-hydration.
As opposed to low-heat dehydration, freeze-drying makes it possible for for the preservation of pre-cooked meals, such as recipes this sort of as soups, stews, stroganoff, and the like. An obvious advantage is that since the meal was geared up in its entirety prior to freeze-drying, all you require to do is simply add water, then warmth for a number of minutes in get to create luxurious foods.
Rehydrating freeze-dried foodstuff takes just a handful of minutes, merely by introducing boiling water. Some foods, like many fruits and greens, want no re-hydration just before ingesting.
Dehydrated foods shrink for the duration of processing as the dampness is eliminated. So the foods merchandise itself is considerably smaller than its original dimension.
The re-hydration time of dehydrated food items requires a bit more time than freeze-dried, but it stills preferences like the first sort of the foodstuff. Some dehydrated foodstuff include added ingredients to enhance flavors or help in preservation. As with freeze-dried fruits and veggies, dehydrated fruits and veggies can be eaten without any re-hydration.
The two approaches of foodstuff preservation enhance the lengthy-term storage daily life of foodstuff. Most commercially produced freeze-dried and dehydrated meals have a shelf existence of 15 to 20 many years, if effectively packaged and saved in a amazing, dry surroundings.
In addition to their being a reliable source of meals in an crisis or prolonged-time period survival state of affairs, simply because of their light-weight fat and ease of portability, these foods are also excellent for taking on tenting, climbing and looking excursions. They are also a clever selection to keep in an emergency road-facet kit for the automobile, or in your bug out bag.
If you choose to keep these food items in your auto as element of an crisis kit, remember to don’t forget to rotate them periodically. Temperatures in a automobile can achieve extremes, equally scorching and cold. Higher warmth as well as steady temperature fluctuations lead to a lot quicker degradation of each dehydrated and freeze-dried meals.
Which Type is Greater for Consumption?
click here is different, and each and every person has their personal personalized tastes and choices. With that in thoughts, there are a couple of things to take into account ahead of producing a determination amongst freeze-dried or dehydrated foods.
House-developed fruits and veggies are much better preserved via dehydration, because the typical particular person can not pay for the costly machinery utilised in freeze-drying.
Foodstuff used in every day cooking and meal planning ought to probably be freeze-dried. This permits the foods to be rapidly re-hydrated as it is cooked prior to serving. If accessibility and portability are critical, than either sort of preserved foodstuff must meet up with these specific requirements. Once yet again, it really is a issue of personalized choices.
In a nutshell, equally dehydrated and freeze-dried food items are outstanding selections for long-term foodstuff storage, as properly as for everyday use or for climbing, camping, and so forth. They the two offer mild-excess weight, moveable, handy foodstuff. The principal variation is that freeze-dried meals tend to better preserve the shape, texture and flavors of the unique foodstuff.
Most men and women will uncover that a mixture will perform greatest for their demands. Solitary-item meals such as veggies, potatoes, and other staples and grains are effectively-suited to low-heat dehydration. Freeze-drying is a lot more appropriate for meats and fruits (whose texture can be preserved), and for pre-cooked foods with a assortment of ingredients such as soups, stews and sauces.
