This gave me an overwhelming desire to get a freeze dryer and live with the kind of joy that steve has found by cooking freeze drying then reheating and rehydrating food
Dude… trust me, I know you’re likely joking but you don’t want one. The technology isn’t there yet for most home use. I bought the same Harvest Right machine several months ago. You saw Steve pleased with the good results, but trust me when I tell you that he went through several hours of frustrating trial and error and that there was likely hundreds of dollars worth of food waste.
First, the unit it massive. He briefly showed his setup in the video and it was still on the pallet that it was shipped on, haha. Not only is the unit massive, it has two separate receptacles, a condenser and a vacuum pump. Thing is hella loud, too.
Two, it’s very finicky. You have to play around with it and roll the dice - no two operations produce the same results. For example, a friend’s property has trees that produce Montmorency cherries. She doesn’t do anything with them so I’ll go harvest some. I like to remove the pits and candy them. They’re so awesome. I freeze dried them once and they turned out amazing. You had these super tart and little balls with a satisfying crunch. I tried to make them again for a Halloween party I was having - same exact process, same position on the rack, same amount of time to process, and they managed to retain some moisture and rotted. Tried the EXACT same process again (it takes like 12-16) hours, mind) and there were no issues. No idea.
Third, the number of things that you can freeze dry don’t come out tasting great. Steve eats a lot of nasty shit, so he’s used to this. I cubed some ham and freeze dried it myself. Reconstituting it, it tasted horrible. It was insanely spongy and the best way to describe the taste was that of a meat product. It had lost its ham characteristics. In its freeze dried form, it was disgusting.
Really simple things seem to work best. Yes, eggs turned out great. Most fruits come out OK. Ice cream, ironically, was one of the worst experiments. I could never get it right. I tried again recently, I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I even went as far as to make my own ice cream (which is a grueling but awesome process) and … whatever. No meats have tasted good to me. Most candy turns out good, and at worst, interesting. You’re not spending nearly 4,000 USD to freeze dry a bunch of goyslop though.
The absolute best usage I’ve found for this thing is making my own protein bars. I get so tired of mixing protein shakes in the morning/afternoon and would much rather have it in convenient bar form. Pleased to report that my homemade protein bars are not only super nutritious, but they taste great. Rich chocolate and tangy raspberry. The downside… it takes 16 hours. The prep takes time itself. Operating this thing is a part-time job.
I love my Harvest Right. It is some of the coolest bit of technology I own. It’s not practical at all. I pass by it in my garage (yes, it sits in my garage because it’s fucking massive) and I feel compelled to use it…. Not because I want to, but because it was such an expensive piece of hardware. I dread all of the prep work to get measurements exact… to make sure things don’t overflow or go above the lip of those trays… just to roll the dice after 16 hours in hopes that whatever I’m trying to freeze dry comes out decent.
Sorry for sperging. I enjoyed that video but I don’t like that he didn’t go into any detail about the nuances with that thing. It’s a neat gadget at best, but super impractical and difficult to use.
