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I’ve been a nurse for 40 years and I totally agree with your glove point. I never wear gloves cooking for my family except for HOT peppers 🌶️. I FD for my family and love your opinions and videos 😘 thank w
I do the exact same thing with gloves (mainly to keep hands clean or avoid chemicals). They're not a panacea. Just think of how many times you see someone in food services wearing gloves and touching non-sanitary items (or scratching an itch), then your food. If you're overly fixated on it, don't go to other countries and see how they serve food (you'll have an aneurysm).
Thanks, and absolutely! Using prefrozen, store bought fruits and vegetables are a great way to go. Frozen foods are almost always picked closer to ripe than anything you would ever find in the produce section of a store, and then processed very quickly. We have done a fair number of batches that way. We have seen a difference with how fruit turns out when we start with Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) fruit. Almost all the IQF fruit we have freeze dried was collapsed at least a very noticeable amount. It would be great to be able to check the cell structure of samples, before and after, of both freeze dried from fresh and IQF foods. One reason they use the IQF process is to keep the ice crystals small and that may no be what we always want for freeze drying. Here is what the Senior VP of manufacturing says here about ice crystals - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OzOvsDVL_Q8.html (sometimes bigger is better)
Thanks for the video. (Agree with the glove thing!) I am not sure if pre-freezing is affecting the oil because as I understand it, the machine does not pull a vacuum until the temps are far below freezing? Right? So, why would pre-freezing improve the oil appearance? Maybe the compressors are just better quality? O. you are coating "freeze dried" pears. I understand now. I thought you were going to try to coat them first, and then freeze dry to see if it actually worked... hehe
Thanks! Yes, and no about it not vacuuming until the temps are far below freezing. The machine tries the "Vacuum Freezing" when it "thinks" it frozen, not when it is "actually" frozen. Sometimes those are a long ways apart. (Especially if you start with full trays of food that's not prefrozen) Plus, the boiling point of the water is way below normal water freezing temps when it's under vacuum. One more thing, the temperate probe is in a location that tells the machine nothing about the actual temperature of the food. When it "thinks" it's cold enough it tries the vacuum cooling to see if it's cold enough. If the pressure rises too high, too fast, it goes back to the freezing cycle to freeze some more before testing again. During every try it can pull water vapor into the vacuum pump. This is one of the reasons we like to prefreeze everything. My assumption that pre-freezing improves the oil appearance (or keeps it good longer) IS just a guess. I have no proof because, even though I know we have the same pump as people who have had oil issues, we've only had a minor cloudy oil issue once. That one minor time was at this point during a vacuum test I was doing. (Which cleared up when I ran the vacuum pump enough to get the oil warm, and with a dry chamber) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JJqCHYoylDE.htmlsi=-RqRfoHIBkOMfp0g&t=187 The ice sublimated and pulled vapor into the oil. (Again, I haven't tested it enough to prove it - only my guess) The chocolate coating trial I did was just for my own snacking. 😋 They held up for two weeks in a regular sandwich ziploc, before we finished eating them all. I thought the pear pieces may have been getting a bit chewy by that time. It's a little hard to tell; this type of pear is never crunchy to begin with. I don't know how they would have held up in a good bag. The rest of the pear cubes went to a commercial company for their testing.
@@SchoolReports Ah. So, I get it now. That would mean that if you could find a way to put some sort of vapor condensing trap in between the vacuum and the freeze dryer, it would potentially reduce the fouling of the oil even more... I still have to wonder why pre-freezing helps so much to keep the oil clean. I do recall ice getting frozen to the walls of the machine at different points. Wouldn't the machine sublimate the ice? I thought I saw you "fan" the inside of your machines to de-ice ... but do you interrupt the machines' process to do that?
@@marcfruchtman9473 Yes a vapor condensing trap (a cold trap) can be added to the vacuum line, and with some systems that is done. Our home freeze dryers are using the chamber walls as the cold trap surface for the sublimated ice from the food to desublimate onto. The problem for us home users is that an external cold trap can cost as much as our freeze dryers. Back to the pre freezing. Have you put moist, room temperature food in the freeze dryer and then had it "snow" inside the machine? As soon as the vacuum starts, the snow all sublimates, and I believe the system gets overloaded by the volume and it doesn't all desublimate onto the chamber walls so some gets pulled into the pump. Ice Crystals in the Freeze Dryer - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8RsiZ-7C1EA.htmlsi=UDWgQgQG4RXCKO-m I do defrost using a fan between batches.
I had a BAD oil situation. I was told by harvest right that it was my banana batch. I had to empty the oil and hand clean out using qtips. It was like a blend of mashed bananas and purée bananas. It was awful. I even had to go around and in the sight glass. So I added clean oil back a then run it for about 10 minutes. All that crap came back!
That just seems so odd. We have 7 years, and between my machine and my sister's, we have over 800 batches and have never seen anything like that. I just don't understand the mechanics/physics of how partials heavier than air are getting moved, in a near vacuum, from the trays, across the empty space over to the vacuum port outlet of the chamber, and into the vacuum pump. Why/how would anything (partials) move? Did Harvest Right happen to tell you _how_ they thought it could happen? Anyone out there have any idea?
29:27 Each tray with its queen! What happens if you put a programmable socket on the vacuum pump (and let it run once every 30 minutes, 10 minutes or another interval)?
I'm pretty sure I don't understand. Are you suggesting/asking about run the vacuum pump in interval for the whole time or just after the machine"thinks" it's done? For the whole process, the pressures would go too high any time the pump stopped and the drying process wouldn't work correctly. For just after it thinks it done, it really doesn't need to run.
@@SchoolReports Because of the high electricity consumption, I thought that the vacuum pump always runs during dehydration... probably the high consumption is from creating a very low temperature, thanks for the answer.
@@sinnerrom With my sister's newer (2022) 4 tray medium machine it uses about 315 watts for the refrigeration unit. With the refrigeration and vacuum pump it uses about 475 watts. With the refrigeration, vacuum pump, and the heaters it uses about 1200 watts. The Power Use of a Dry Check - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1B5E6EN1A0M.htmlsi=03LytvUKvEbJVGdV
I wondered what that dark machine was you were talking about. I’ve only seen you use the Johnny apple peeler (and have thought about trying it out on Anjou pears, I would think it would work, Bartlett pears not so much) and will review it on my channel when I get it up and running. I got it awhile ago off your Amazon store, but don’t see this black item; I don’t know what it is. Is it possible to get a link for your yellow colander? It looks like something I could use, though as I type this I’m now thinking about this bowl I have being big enough for a couple of strainers I have…🤔 What year/model is your sister’s machine (you list yours but not hers)? I hadn’t thought of using the system check as a way of getting the chamber cold enough before putting pre-frozen food in it. Doing the pre-freeze has saved time the machine uses to freeze things before starting the vacuum freeze cycle. It’s reduced the machine’s regular cycle down to 24 hours. As I mentioned on another vid I add 10 hours extra dry time as opposed to the 12 you add. Have you noticed most food is done with the extra 10-12 hours entered in? My 2nd weighing has proven that the food I've pre-frozen and freeze dried is usually done after 10 hours. I haven’t tried to lessen this time. I still run through the process of “extra dry time” just in case. The pears must have been very delicate given the way you were adding the chocolate finish to them. I’ve seen several videos and yours had to be taking the most care when covering in chocolate. The other videos have taken the chocolate covered food and put in a plastic zip bag, keeping it for 2 months with no change in the texture of the freeze dried food inside. Strange that your pears were the first time I’ve heard where the chocolate coating was not enough. Perhaps it’s due to blanching or the covering was thicker? A few have added a gum arabic (sp?) coating on top of the chocolate to give the entire product a sheen and this was an oxygen deterrent? I am curious. Chocolate covered pears…this was a new concept to me.
It's a french fry cutter. I was thinking I could slice the pears 1'2" thick in one direction then put them though this 1/2" fry cutter and get nice even pear cubes. The pears were just too close to full ripe and soft for it to work. Comice pears are very soft and juicy when they get anywhere close to ripe. When they are freeze dried they have even less structure, they are like pear flavored cotton candy. They just melt in your mouth. The yellow colander is a Tupperware one that we've had for as long as I can remember. I can't believe (okay, I can believe it:) I forgot to put her machine info on the screen in this video! My sister's machine is a late 2022 medium running 5.4.23. After we went to the 10 to 12 hours of "Extra" dry time we now get maybe 50% of the batches complete at the first _Dry Check_ time. So much still depends on how much the trays are loaded with. Comice and Bosc pears are the only ones that I have a great deal of experience with. Bosc have much more structure than Comice and will probably hold up to bagging better. I'm still not sure there _was_ a change to the texture of pear cubes inside the chocolate. I didn't have any data except my memory of how they were before and after (2 or 3 weeks apart), and I wouldn't rely on that as a good data point. I've chocolate coated pear pieces before, but we've always snacked them all within a day or so.😁 Or minutes. The place I was doing them for will have people and equipment for good quality testing. They won't be doing any guessing. (And they really know chocolate)
I have a question about storage. After you put the food in the mylar bags, is there a certain type of container that the mylar bags should be stored in?
Great question! We store ours on racks, in big plastic bins that we got at Costco. Other people use cardboard boxes or whatever containers work for their space. And, in general, cooler temperatures are better for longer storage. Freeze Dried Food Bins/Racks - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1FNCelTsgrg.htmlsi=dnERzcreYrEIckFA Here is what Mountain House has to say about storage: "Store Mountain House food under dry, sanitary conditions, without prolonged exposure to extreme temperatures and avoiding any environment that could cause damage to the packaging, such as punctures or dents. To maximize shelf life, store food unopened and avoid prolonged exposure to temperatures above 75°F (24°C)."
Absolutely! I will show it. Her machine is currently at 79 batches since the last change and the oil through the sight glass still looks perfect. It'll be a little while still; her machine need 21 more batches before the next oil change. She hasn't done any batches for 2 months now, due to being T-boned and having her car totaled and needing to heal a bit before she can do more. ("Just" very bruised and a broken sternum)
