Have you ever tossed out spoiled produce or leftovers? How about those cans of food that are nearing their expiration date sitting on the shelf at the back of your food storage?
With that said, I’m married to a woman who puts me to shame with her mechanical maintenance abilities, so after a couple of struggles with changing the oil she now has it down to an art.
The best choice I ever made when it comes to long-term storage food is getting a freeze dryer. I didn’t always think that. It was far more work than I imagined and the maintenance on the machine is annoying when it needs it.
Regular maintenance includes cleaning the lint filters, inspecting and cleaning heating elements, checking for any blockages in vents, and ensuring all moving parts are lubricated. Follow the manufacturer's maintenance guidelines for specific intervals.
I removed the side covers and found the water dripping from the chamber insulation. I called up HarvestRight to ask for ideas on how to avoid this in the future.
I did a couple of batches (peas and carrots, and another load of precooked chicken meatballs cut in half) and it all worked perfectly. Looking forward to trying out some new things and sharing the results.
You can count on me sticking around to talk about the food side of things! My wife looked at me a little oddly when I got the freeze dryer, but now she's a fan too. I'm discovering things that it can do that I hadn't expected, such as making low carb snacks.
This includes setting as many as five different shelf temperatures, thus allowing the material to dry in Buy Freeze Dryer phases, at different temperatures. For instance, you might have the material begin drying at 10ºF and increase the temperature in phases until the ultimate final dry temperature is 70ºF.
The evaporator coils that touch the surface of the stainless steel vacuum chamber reach about -42 F. With food in the chamber and website because the location of the thermister is on the middle shelf of the four shelves, the temperature it records is going to range from -25 to -30 F in the nove hour default freeze time. This temperature is very adequate for freeze drying the food.
adding insulation on the 3 ports on the chamber (One time thing - the drain and vacuum ports are very easy to get to)
If you don’t have the time or money, or if you believe the food crisis will hit hard very soon, then it makes more sense to buy freeze-dried food instead.
Cooked eggs can be freeze dried, but they tend to be rubbery when reconstituted. If you want to freeze dry cooked eggs, I recommend slightly undercooking them and then rehydrating them with boiling water. It will finish cooking them without making them rubbery.
Back from our trip I turned the unit on and to my dismay found that the display was missing the middle two lines.
and this piece was placed on the vacuum hose fitting. I can still remove the panel without removing the hose to clean the coils. Simply remove the screws and slide the panel down the vacuum hose a few inches.