Freeze Dried Biscuits and Gravy are awesome! If you have not done them before, they are something you need to work into your rotation. Follow this recipe with your #traydividers from www.freezedryingsupplies.com and you have a rock solid recipe every time!
I love that you do this. I feel safer trying it myself and being on a limited budget I really can't afford to waste food. So you are a blessing to me. Thank you!!
I am relatively new to the freeze drying thing but B&G was one of the first things I tried. I did everything pretty much like Brian did but I used Pioneer brand dry sausage gravy mix instead. Cooked the sausage and rinsed it then mixed it into the prepared gravy. When I packaged it I put the biscuits in the pouch with the gravy. I weighed everything before and after, divided it into portions by weight and figured my water to add. It turns out great. The Pioneer mix is well seasoned and a bit spicy, no need for extra seasoning.
I grind my own special pork sausage to use. Use whole pork loin from costco and trim off all the fat first. Then I cut it up into cubes and grind it using a hamburger plate. Then I add my own sage sausage seasoning to ground pork and grind again for the 2nd time. Then I grind for the 3rd time to really incorporate the sausage seasoning evenly into the pork. This way you have a lean sausage. It cooks great and freeze dries perfectly without basically any fat, so it should store for 25+ years in mylar bag with oxygen absorber.
This is what I think I'll do. We buy from a local butcher plus we make beef, turkey and chicken sausage (we raise the beef and chickens). Great thinking.
Instead of frying sausage or ground meat, try baking it in a colander. Use a stainless colander and put it in a pan to catch the grease and fat that drains.
Just took my sausage gravy out of the freeze dryer using your technique, OMG! It’s amazing!!! I made 5 large trays and plan to do another 5 large trays this weekend. I didn’t do biscuits too, only the gravy! Can’t sing your praises loud enough!
REALLY like when you do the side by side. Gives us a leg up on people who are buying some type of long term food. Decided to give freeze dried B&G packets as holiday gifts. 👍
Love the comparison! There is no way I'm going to rinse my sausage! I would rather can it, if it can't be freeze dried with all the grease intact. I dont even drain it. When i make the gravy, i mix the flour into the cooked sausage to make a roux, add whole milk, let it thicken, you're done. Nobody worries about the fat in sour cream or cream cheese or cheddar cheese when freeze drying. Biscuits are loaded with fat. If animal fat isn't exposed to oxygen, it should be just fine.
I like how you always reiterate that this is simply YOUR recipe, and are not telling people that "this is the way" like so many RU-vid posters do with any topic. You also minimize the trolls who will want to criticize just about anything on YT just to stir things up. We are anxious to try this recipe to take camping with us.
I love Chipped Beef I grew up on it and sadly my mom does not make Chipped Beef anymore and she does not cook at all and I have been eatting can foods or TV Dinners and going out to eat. XD
Brian, I would like to see a sous vided sausage set up in terms of storage. When cooking sausage in a sous vide set up, the sausage has much more of the fat rendered put than if you were to cook it traditionally. Especially with something like this, it wouldn't matter that it gets over cooked, which is better controlled in sousvide anyway. You can just drain everything once you're done, and there's binders for fat such as maldextrose, which makes fats able to be freeze dried without added flavor or worry about what you're consuming. Sous vide also ensures that sausages aren't undercooked, or that none of the end products will have the same fat content you'd expect otherwise.
I am going to try this with the turkey sausage crumbles from Jimmy Dean and Pioneer County gravy mix. I am in the middle of making a two week supply of freeze dried foods I can give to the inlaws for Christmas. They are still asleep and not getting prepared. I was scratching my head trying to figure out what other breakfast options to provide. Now I have a new recipe. Thanks!!
Thank you so much for this video!! We will be trying this for sure with our Harvest Right! We actually had chicken and dressing with gravy for dinner tonight that was freeze dried and we really enjoyed it!
Pork sausage is traditional, but I'm sure you could season ground chicken or turkey to make the sausage. The lack of fat should make it alot more long term stable. I feel most of the flavor will be in the gravy anyway so the lean meat will soak up that flavor. Might be another test batch to see if it's a winner. Can't wait to get a freeze dryer for myswlf.
Thank you for all of your videos! We bought a freeze dryer at the beginning of April. We were able to buy one at a local store so we did not have to wait for a delivery. When we started the dryer we did the set up the way the company said to do it, meaning we did the test run and then 1st run with bread. Both of these worked just fine. Then we tried to do a run with chicken and could not get it to get past the vacuum freezing stage. We did do some adjustments on the dryer like the sealing of the oil demister like your video showed. Also putting sealing tape around the crimps on the hoses. We ended up contacting Harvest Right and going thru all of the trouble shooting for leaks. We were able to get up and running after sealing with silicone the top wire connections on the freeze dryer. We have now done a ton of freeze drying; chicken, chicken and rice , broccoli, carrots, fried rice, steak, taco spiced hamburger and a lot of scrambled eggs. Going to try some scrambled hamburger and gravy. Thanks for al the tips!
I would drain off the grease from the sausage and put it in the freezer. Then you can add a little bit of it after you rehydrate and go to heat it so you get that fat back in. I realize that means you have to be able to keep it frozen or refrigerated, but it doesn't have to be kept frozen, it just needs to be under 40º, which unless you're totally without any refrigeration can be done. You don't need a ton. A quart of grease/fat (mix with bacon fat, too) will go a really long way.
I've found that ham works very well for a protein in freeze drying, and frankly I think it tastes better than sausage after rehydrating and still gives you that salty, smoky meat flavor you want with biscuits and gravy.
The mountain house made my blood sugar jump up when I ate it. I like every thing else about it. The mre meals that I had in the air force were very bad when freeze dried meat was involved. this was 40 years ago.
Learned to boil the hamburger and sausage for almost everything. Spaghetti, sloppy Joe's, and now for fd. I learned this in a cooking class, boils out the nasty fat, then seasonings and food oil can be added if needed. I will be freezing drying homemade chili this week.
I would make a delish white gravy, powder it. Separately do bacon and sausage crumble. Then biscuits separately. Then combine in bags in a good ratio. That way the powdered gravy will immediately soak up the bulk of the liquid and then contribute to rehydrating other ingredients
I guess I’m too lazy. I just go to Costco, get a couple of #10 cans of sausage gravy and a box of frozen biscuits. Cut up the biscuits, throw it all into the freezer dryer and BAM, freeze dried B and G.
Have you heard from Harvest Right about your order? Mine was supposed to be 5 to 7 week delivery. It's been six and I haven't had any correspondence from them.
I've found fresh sausage from pork loin makes a very lean mix that might even need a bit of added fat to be palatable. I'll keep the MH and other survival brands for long term storage but 3-5 years is plenty for foods I made, enjoy and am rotating regularly.
When I make a diner style hot dog chili dog sauce I use the old method of boiling the hamburger meat to get the right texture. Perhaps boiling the sausage would do the same and allow the grease to float to the top and be poured off. You would simply have very small pieces of meat versus chunks but it may actually be better. You could pan fry to finish it up after you pour the water out so that you can control the amount of oil/grease.
I dehydrate bone broth including pork. . I will freeze dry it when my freeze dryer arrives. I always skim off all fat. I think if you add a little bone broth powder to the mix it will add back any flavor you rinse off.
Thanks so much for your videos. I have purchased items from you and I’m so excited to use them. My FD will be delivered tomorrow!!!!! Keep up the great videos! I feel like I will have a great start to my FD ventures.
As an alternative to Mt House Biscuits and Gravy, I really like Peak Refuel Biscuits & Sausage Gravy. They cost a little bit more but you get real whole biscuits and the flavor is so much better than the Mt House.
could you add some scrambled eggs in there?? Folks on an aerobic sewage system or on a septic tank might want change the method of draining the fat off.
I wonder if turkey sausage would give you a longer shelf life? I've been looking at turkey bacon as well to FD for long term. I know it's not as great as the real deal, but if it gets you a longer shelf life, why not. Keep up the great work.
One way to make it store longer is freeze dry the biscuits and gravy all combined, and freeze dry the sausage separately. That way you can long term store the basic meal and then circulate the sausage through a shorter storage time frame.
I have a bunch of the Mountain House meals. I got them free as a reviewer (can't say the name of the program rules etc..) anyway my favorites so far are the Italian Style Pepper Steak and the Mexican Style Adobo Rice and Chicken. Absolutely Delicious. I want to like the scrambled eggs and bacon but its hard to reconstitute properly. definitely try the others though WOULD LOVE to see your take on a home made version of those !! the directly are BAD however. example the pepper steak says 1.5 cups water. Don't do this. never seems to come our right or gets cold before its right 9 minutes my ass. takes more like 20 SO ONE SINGLE cup of boiling water. one cup only mr vasille. just one cup. stir seal it up I tend to want to shake it don't the zip lock seals give out and you end up WEARING IT. trust me. my keyboard is wearing a bunch of the eggs still :-( anyway let it 100% absorb that water 10-15 minutes. its going to clearly look like it needs more water. that's fine. NOW reboil your water and slowly add in more water until you get the consistency you want. it more fully absorbs doing it this way AND it gets heated back up again as you add that last half cup sometimes even more than half a cup. NOW its properly reconstituted AND piping hot! soooo delicous. wish they were not so damned expensive. $10 a pop is a LOT but compared to thousands of dollars that I just don't have ....... Grrrrrrr I would love to see a recipie for home made versions of those two above. they were both absolutely delicious.
Thank you for the video. Looking at the Avid Armor, did you still add an oxygen absorber? Second question, you talked about making more to fill the last tray. Can you run a batch without filling all the trays if you do not have enough to fill all trays?
It would also be nice to compare the sodium content. It seems salt is Mountain Houses’ go to seasoning. Great video. My freeze drier is on order and I think I’ll have to do several biscuits and gravy meals.
Try cooking the sausage in a basket in an Instant Pot. The sausage will cook and the grease will drain to the bottom. Then rinse the sausage in the basket. Most of the fat will be gone.
I am so thankful for you and your family, all that you have invested for the benefit of others. I hope you receive a good reward for all the hard work! I would love to make this recipe, but the milk products available to me at this time do not agree with me. Do you think I could use milk alternatives? OBVIOUSLY I am very new to this, and have my first batch of freeze dried goods running as I type, strawberries and pineapple! Thank you!
@@live.life.simple. Thank you for your quick response! You have been such an inspiration. Your solutions for food preservation have been an answer(s) to prayer! God bless you and your family!
How do you calculate how much water to add to a package of homemade freeze-dried food?? Also, do you always use hot/boiling water? Or is that dependent on the dried food (i.e., fruit, etc..)
Figure out portion size or better yet use our dividers from www.freezedryingsupplies.com weigh before and after freeze drying and the difference is the weight amount of water removed. Divide that by the amount of portions. You don't have to use boiling water on everything. Heat does not change things in most cases but gives a desired temperature on some foods.
instead of frying your sausage from raw, boil it, all the fat collects to the top of the water. Then flash fry the moist meat on a pan with like a teaspoon of oil of your choice. When browned let sit till that teaspoon of oil drains. Then chop up the pieces to acceptable size( 5/8 inch or smaller in diameter. throw some garlic powder and onion powder and a little salt and a decent amount of black pepper.
I tried freeze drying precooked sausage patties. The result was DON"T DO IT. The freeze dryer was coated with fat from supposedly precooked sausage. Apparently those precooked sausage patties are mostly fat.
How would it be to simmer the cooked sausage crumbles in water for a bit instead of rinsing them off in the sink? That way you could save the broth, skim off the fat, reduce it down and use it to flavor the gravy instead of rinsing the flavor down the drain. Also, rinsing sausage fat down the drain seems like it would be bad for the plumbing.
My freeze dryer is being delivered tomorrow! I make a vegan sausage gravy with TVP, veggie broth, cashews and cornstarch. How do you think that would freeze dry? Has anyone tried it?
@@live.life.simple. Today I bought a new Harvest Right FD. The bottom has rust on it. The screws are rusty. Is that normal? Should I return it? It will rot my table it will sit on.
I love this one. What a great simple filling meal with a lot of calories if you need it. Or even if you don't need it. What about just leaving out the things that don't need to be freeze dried? Why not leave the dry ingredients dry and then mix it all together at the time you are ready to eat it?
I am still new to vac sealing, but if the seal is compromised, its very noticeable when the bag has been vac sealed. If there is oxygen being introduced through a leak or puncture and oxygen absorber is not going to help. Just my two cents.
Vacuum sealing does not remove 100% of the oxygen, there is oxygen still remaining in small pockets around the items inside that package. An oxygen absorbers is a chemical reaction, so it actually consumes the oxygen, but leaves the other components of breathable air behind. My understanding is that an O2 absorber removes more oxygen than vacuum sealing.
I noticed you used the Mylar bag with the sealer. But when you look up the sealer they only offer the nylon clear bags. Does it matter the thickness of the Mylar bag when sealing?
I think you will be ok for a shorter term product. I have not had good luck with half and half or heavy whipping cream. Some say having the oil and fat are fine for long term, I tend to try and eliminate it as much as possible.
Do you still need to use an oxygen absorber with the avid armor vacuum sealer? I didn't see that you put one in before you used the vacuum sealer machine.
