Freeze Dryer Unboxing - The Difference Between Freeze Drying vs Dehydrating

I ordered a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer and it finally arrived. I decided to do an unboxing video of it!

I owe it to my amazing community over on my live stream who came together and got me this. It was totally unexpected!

This freeze dryer now allows me to freeze dry a lot of my foods, preserving them while keeping the nutrition values of them high for 25-30years! It’s perfect for my long term food storage goals.

My minds been flooding with freeze dry ideas for what I want to add to my long term food storage: fruit, meat, candy and a plethora of other goodies! I currently have my first test run in the freeze dryer right now, filled with peaches, pineapple, strawberries and mango. I’ll be you posted in a soon to come vlog for how it turns out.

One of the most popular questions I get is What’s the difference between freeze dried and dehydrated foods?

First let’s go over What is freeze dried food?

Freeze drying is a process of preserving food in a cold vacuum process. It’s typically a three-step process. First, decide what food you want to preserve. Second, freeze it and third place the food in your freeze dryer where the ice crystals in the food transform directly into water vapor. It never goes into the liquid state.

What is dehydrated food?

Dehydration is a process of placing food on a rack inside an electric dehydrator, hot dry air circulates around the food removing the moisture. The temperature is hot enough to remove the moisture but not cook the food which results in a dehydrated food!

Key Differences Between The Two

#1 Moisture

• A freeze dryer will remove 98%-99% of moisture
• A dehydrator will remove around 70%-80%
  With a lower moisture content the food has a longer shelf life

#2 Weight

• Freeze dried food weighs much less than dehydrated food. It makes it perfect for bug-out bags and camping supplies where you don’t want to lug around a lot of weight.

#3 Nutrition

• With freeze dried food much of the nutrition remains intact with the exception of vitamin c which evaporates quickly during the cold vacuum process. However a vast amount of the other vitamins and minerals are believed to remain unchanged from their original state.
• Dehydrating food is known to alter iron or fiber and also decrease niacin, thiamine, riboflavin and vitamins A and C.

Now that you know all about how a freeze dryer works, what should I freeze dry next?