Freeze-Dried Meals: Not Just for Emergencies

There are many reasons why our customers purchase a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer. Some are expecting to use this technology to provide diet-specific foods for family members with allergies or illnesses. Others love the idea of taking this lightweight option on the trail, to the camp, or even out to sea. Some may want a taste of home when their jobs call them to foreign soil.

Others are excited about building a back-up supply to augment provisions in times of crisis, whether familial or on a larger scale. Understanding the fluidity of life means being able to ride those fluid waves of job change, family emergencies, illnesses, and other things that happen.

When building a supply of freeze-dried food, one of the temptations is to seal it up and forget about it until it is needed. We have processed it to allow long term storage, and it seems counter-intuitive to pull these foods out and use them during normal everyday food prep. However, there are several reasons for doing so.

Using these foods on a regular basis gives you new insights into rehydration and integration into meals. Expecting to have a meal on the table in an hour, then finding that your pork chops aren’t rehydrating as planned may discourage you. However, if you work with them a few times, you may find that a little planning ahead is all that you need. Next time, you may want to moisten and refrigerate for a while before you try to use them. You may discover that you like them better when they are rehydrated with broth. You might decide a simple switch to thin slices of cooked pork serves you better than chops. Only by working with these foods will you know what works best for you.

You may be one of the natural experimenters, and while others aren’t as curious, you can’t wait to get a bit of the last batch and play with it. Rehydrating it back into what it was before is part of the fun, and the whole process is intriguing.

Over time, you won’t even blink when you reach for the jar of sweet corn or hominy as a quick side dish or soup addition. It will seem like an easy option to throw some apples into a dessert. If you forget to defrost the burger for dinner, you have the back-up plan available, and those tacos will be amazing when you use the rehydrated version.

Regardless of your reason for purchasing a freeze dryer, we know that you will find the ease of use a motivating factor in continued use. Make a meal today of your Harvest Right foods!