I bet $20 to my friend that he would make another heat pump related video within a year of the "Heat Pumps Are Not Hard" video. I won, the heat pump water heater video was released 11 months later. EDIT: Spelling
A-A steamed hams reference?! At this time of year, At this time of day, In this part of RUclips, Localized *entirely* within the Technology Connections Freeze Dryer video?
Regarding the 'Magic Physics' for your ice buildup problem: The cold spot does not attract the Water/Ice, the gaseus water moves to every place with roughly the same chance, but the cold area is the place where the water looses it's energy and is significantly less likely to leave again, so it accumulates there.
To add on that: the opening that the pump uses is much, much smaller than the surface of the drum and at such a low pressure you're not really creating a significant flow of gas to the pump, you're again just waiting for the molecules to more or less randomly find their way to the pump. In short: if the drum wasn't cooled during the drying, the pressure would significantly increase and the whole thing wouldn't work anymore.
Also from everything I've seen just investing less than $100 in a vacuum sealer can help prevent freezer burn and extend foods freezer life. Between that canning, drying, and fermenting and just buying some already freeze dried stuff you'd maybe want in an emergency seems more realistic. A small solar power system to run a chest freezer probably costs less too and can be sized up to include some other fun things that are useful.
Dude, for reconstituting you need to look to the astronauts for what they do. Most importantly you want to weigh the ingredients before and after so you know how much water is missing. Eyeballing it absolutely will lead to very dry or very moist. And then it's basically directly add warm water, warm not directly boiling and let it sit for a bit. Preferably sealed with the moisture against it directly. Though the thought of you waving a slice of freeze dried ham in front of a mister is incredible and worth subscribing to the other channel for.
Freeze drying works pretty well with fresh herbs especially when compared to conventional dehydration-try mint, basil, cilantro parsley, spring onions, etc.
For small amounts yes. But for large amounts freeze drying is too expensive and time consuming. I can keep basil fresh and green by blanching, vacuum sealing then freezing.
@@N1withaskillet is it because the method is really good or like with fruits where the cost of the equipment is so high that it only makes sense to freeze dry high quality products?
I love that reference then the kitchen and house burn down with Agnes Skinner inside yelling the house is on fire and Seymour then saying it's just the Northern Lights.
You know what would be really interesting, from a weight and hence fuel savings transportation perspective? If freeze drying was super widespread in the groceries we bought, and we all had rehydrators in our homes - i.e. transporting everything but the water. This is probably not practical for one or more reasons, least of which would be food texture and taste getting messed with even after being rehydrated (powdered milk for example), in addition to the expense of freeze drying foods in the first place, but still an interesting idea to think about nonetheless. Given simply steaming them didn't work too well here, I'm guessing you might have to use some sort of pressurized device like a pressure cooker to force the water back in, versus simply letting it reenter.
The really interesting thing, that I have worked on as a hobby for some time, is desert farming. You have all the sun you need for electricity for climate control and lyophilization, which could allow you to reuse the water. The truck that picks up the food would refill water supply.
Re: Freeze Drying Ice Cubes: iirc, James Hoffman did a video on making his own instant coffee with a freeze dryer much like this one, and he was able to use ice cube trays to freeze the coffee in a regular freezer, although he removed the cubes from the trays and smashed them up before loading into the dryer trays.
The reason the vacuum pump does not just suck the moisture out is because there is no such thing as sucking. It's similar to how there is no such thing as 'coldness' - it's just less heat. With vacuum just being less pressure, getting the last bit of air out becomes a waiting game as the molecules fly around randomly and only occasionally find their way into the vacuum hose. Similarly, the water molecules will fly off the product and bounce around the hot surfaces until they hit a surface cold enough to condense/freeze. Some will still make it down the vacuum hose but since the cold chamber walls are sort of everywhere, that's by far the most likely place they end up hitting.
I use a freeze dryer at my work to prepare samples for analysis for total mercury content and other geochemical processes. Our system is set to -50 C and 0.165 mbar, there is no programmed end time. We will leave our samples for at least three days , then if it passes a visual inspection, we would then physically check each sample for a "cold" feeling. If our sample feels cold to the touch, that implies a piece of ice is still remaining in the centre and that we need to continue the process. We have an 18L collection chamber and often if the ice on the collector is too thick we need to pause the run defrost the collector, dry the inside of the unit, and then continue the run. I can only imagine that this at home unit is going to be closer to our older 2.5L unit where we had to defrost the system every two days so that the samples would maybe dry in a week.
I've been thinking, this machine will absolutely do a perfect job every time... if you just run it for multiple days in a row. Its trying its best to not seem like a giant waste of time and energy so its attempting to cut it off at the earliest possible moment to reasonably suspect its probably maybe dry. If you want to have food until 2050, you don't need it to be sort kinda dry, you need it to be effing surface of the sun dry
We use it at work as well, since according to some literature freeze drying biomass intended for the extraction of genomic DNA increases the yeild and decreases the shearing of DNA. It also allows for easier homogenisation and breakage of cell walls, which furthers the ammount of DNA extracted. We also run it for around 48 hours at 0.5 mbar and then for another hour or so at 0.05 mbar final drying pressure, with -50C temperature.
The preppers have their good points too. They're one of the biggest solar power advocates and when they treat you like a guest during install you get some of the freshest food I've ever had when they've got their own minifarm.
So... No magic of buying 2 of them? So glad you got this video out before November. Really was considering one of these and enjoy the long format. On another note can't wait for your November videos.
As for the difficulty with reconstituting the milk: if you mix the desired amount of powdered milk with a *very small* amount of cold water, you should be able to create a slurry which will allow the fat to emulsify. Then you can add the rest of the water. I do this when making cocoa with pure cocoa powder (I don't use sugar). It faces the same basic challenge due to the high amount of fat in cocoa powder.
Yes, this is correct. Milk contains spherules of fat that stay suspended in water, but removing the water destroys the vesicles, and allows the oil to coalesce. To resuspend the fats, you need to add water and lots of stirring. If you do it with full water, it spills and froths and churns. Just use a tiny amount until it's all dissolved, then fill to 1/3 and stir hard (scrape bottom corners), then fill to 1/1 and it should come out nice. Labor saving devices...
I was just writing up the exact same comment and figured I would take a look through the comments to see if anyone else already did since this is a pretty new video. Would like to see the results of the milk reconstitution using this method :)
Oil bath vacuum pumps like the one used for this machine don't much like moisture so you need a cold trap or another way to keep the water out of the pump. If it gets in the pump, it mixes with the oil and it's not very good.
The trouble is really for that amount of money (and your time) you can buy a whole lot of professionally freeze dried food from the big named vendors. Skittles themselves sell freeze dried
Freeze dried strawberries are the secret to why my homemade icecream is so good. I can jam a lot more strawberries into the same volume than you can with fresh and the flavor is way more concentrated.
You forgot burying earthenware ceramic crocks below the frost line in your backyard. My mother in law used to do that around my aspen trees in order to store her Kimchi. Rest in peace grandma Kim.
@@newq They've only made their way into the midwest recently, and still not anywhere near small towns. Closest many people can get is Chinese takeout. Heartbreaking, really... Korean BBQ goes HARD.
Look to backpacking meals for inspiration. Smaller pieces of things like meat (also makes freeze drying faster) rehydrated with a carefully determined but still rough ratio of boiling water to freeze-dried product. Let sit for 5-20 minutes (depending on product density) and enjoy! Boiling water heats and hydrates without any significant further cooking.
Also there's an easy trick to calculating rehydration ratio (at least with traditional dehydrating but don't see why it wouldn't work for FD)-just weigh the food going in and then the dried product, and add about the difference to rehydrate (at least as a starting point to then trial and error from, since dehydration and rehydration aren't precisely reversible processes)
Assuming three meals a day, and that you can source ingredients for $10 less than you can buy a backpacking meal from REI, and you value your time at $0 an hour, you only need to supply 100 days of backpacking to make back your investment. I value my time, and don’t backpack nearly enough to justify that cost, but it is pretty neat. I’d buy one for 1k in a blink
To be honest, there isnt much to a freeze dryer. If, and this is a weight bearing if, you where capable of programming a PID controller OR willing to manually cycle every step it would be around a thousand dollars to get an DIY kit together sourcing out machining that you cannot do yourself etc. And if your a decent fabricator with access to some scrap fridges you could probably make one for less then $500 much less even depending on what you have around.
I use a commercial version for my farm. I sell them at the farmers market and gain profit from food that would normally be composted or thrown out. Freeze dryers are not for normies
@AnonymousAnarchist2 I DIY'd a setup a couple years back... It was definitely a process and pain in the @ss understanding how it worked with almost no content on freeze drying in a DIY freeze drier... Also, using homemade super coolant was it's own fun bag of safe handling..🤦♂️ They get the price down to 1k and it would definitely be worth it just as a matter of convience and ease of use... great content btw... very thorough and well explained... sublimation is one of the more confusing concepts to process cause it uses temp differential and vacuum pressure to do what dry ice does at room temperature...🤦♂️
I consider you an edutainer. A very good one at that. Hats off. Influencers are somewhere else on the "food chain" and... let's play nice and just leave it at that.
i mean influencing was always just a way to rebrand selling out.... using the phrase to include people that aren't shills only serves to help it accomplish that goal.
You focused heavily on the prepper community as targets for this, but another community that commonly uses freeze dried food (and actually eats it!) are backpackers and campers. Head to your local REI and you’ll see tons and tons of freeze dried food, including astronaut ice cream. I don’t think anyone backpacks enough for this to be economical, but I could see someone doing it to get the exact food they want. You should look at those backpacking meals for ideas on what to freeze dry and how to reconstitute it (hint: just add boiling water).
I feel like most of the stuff that tastes good freeze dried, or is more convenient that way, you can already buy. I mean it's expensive, but so is owning and running this thing.
28:00 interesting thing I learned about instant coffee. For the best prep, you should use a little cold water in the cup, stir in the crystals, then add hot water after. And it's WAY better then. Maybe a strategy for the freeze dried coffee.
the walls form a "Cold Trap" (wiki article is pretty good) that preferentially collects the ice vs it getting into the vacuum pump's oil and damaging it.
How is a vacuum pump not suitable for collecting moisture in the air, would it not collect condensation just as an air compressor does from the humidity in the air?
@@matt45540 a vacuum pump does not feature the tank as a condenser for the moisture. also it's lostly piston compressors and these are wayy less wear-prone then vane-based vacuum pumps on degraded oil. also airtool compressors draw a maximum of air humidity. A/C evacuation vacuum pumps and this unit (basically the same) draw extra moist air through them which degrades the oil extra fast.
@@matt45540pumps like this aren't designed to have water or particulates in the volume it pumps. Sublimated ice is a gas, but when it hits the vanes and the pressure increases inside the pump, it condenses as water. And think about how the volume that you are pumping is almost entirely composed of gaseous H2O. Very little would be N2/O2/CO2 (air). The water then continually coats the downstream portion of the pump, as long as its pumping water it will be condensing. This can displace oil or directly corrode the moving parts. The pump could still run like this for some time but it does add additional wear and significantly lowers the life span of the equipment the more you run it like that. most industrial pumps that deal with water will have cold traps, either directly inline with the pump or as a separate system (like this freeze drier). A pump that can handle water will either be a lot more money, or it won't be able to pump to as low of a pressure. why doesn't air do the same thing since its humid? Well, air isn't nearly as wet, even at 100% humidity, the volume would be way less % of H2O vs. the above example. And the small amount of water that does happen to condense on the exhaust side of the pump would be nearly as quickly blown away/absorbed by the air blowing past it. And the condensation slows the lower your pressure goes, until you reach base pressure. sorry if I'm overexplaining. I worked 20 years on vacuum systems but I never did pump maintenance, so I will take correction from a pump expert. My expertise is in high vacuum systems primarily.
Consider the sublimated water molecule like a little bullet. They fire off kinda randomly and bounce around until they hit the cold walls. When they do, they either lose some energy to the wall and bounce away, or they stick. The evacuated chamber doesn't have enough air left to create a suction towards the pump inlet. Some water molecules will happen to bounce their way into it, but the cold walls have WAY more surface area. So most of the water builds up as ice along the sides
Before freeze-drying became popular, freezer-dryers, especially from the brand you bought, had a starting price of $600 only. That used to be affordable, but thanks to influencers, the prices just inflated in less than 2 years.
As someone who has dabbled with the thought of "having a freeze-dryer might be fun", thanks, this video helped put that thought to bed for another few years. I would like to see more successes/failures/interestings, so will be looking forward to the follow-up.
You can vacuum seal your mason jars with either a lid with a valve or one of those vacuum sealers that pull the air out with a normal lids. We use those to store items (like nuts) that go rancid before you can eat them alll.
Thank you for buying a freeze dryer so I didn't have to. I _was_ considering one to dry out the 50lbs of peppers I grew this year but when I realized they were multiple thousands of dollars and barely fit anything in them I changed my mind.
Yeah my parents had one and it died in the first year. They're best for drying hash which is likely why they've exploded in recent years. For peppers just slice and dry at the lowest temperature of a standard oven for 10-15 hours. They're way better than dehydrators. The heat activates flavors etc. ❤
I use an air fryer on its lowest setting (65deg) and reset it once it maxes it's timer after an hour - does the job but I do want to upgrade one day. Not sure how well it will work for capsicums but works for strawberries if you slice them thin, only takes about 2 hours if both sides are exposed. The hardest part is not guzzling them before canning them. Even in the middle of my strawberry glut I had to buy a pack of freeze dried ones though, I just love the texture. And strawberries. Anyway a normal food dehydrator is probably a good option for you if your convection oven(s) aren't cutting it.
@Farimira you can often find normal food dehydrators at thrift shops if you have them where you are. They're an item people buy, use a few times, then get tired of it and donate lol
Thank you so much for doing this video! I have been debating getting one of these recently, and this is literally the best video that I could’ve ever watched and I never would’ve thought you would’ve done one on freeze-drying but once again surprised and impressed
Strawberries work really well because they have low sugar, and nearly all the flavor-including the sweetness-is actually volatile chemicals that you lose when you heat them. So freeze drying concentrates them, and you can add them to other strawberries (preferably macerated) to get double strawberry flavor.
i just want you to know i very rarely have any interest in the actual subject matter of your videos but your explanations, visuals, and your general passion (or very least, enthusiastic interest!) for what you talk about is the whole reason i come back to watch. making me sit down and watch and really enjoy a video about freeze dryers is wild. a crazy skill to have, big props to Big Tech’ ‘Nections
I think you made a lot of great points in this video as someone who has been keeping an eye on these products due to how expensive they are. I think the one thing that would be interesting to look into is from the camping/hiking community. A lot of the freeze dried meals you can buy online that actually taste good are fairly expensive for a very small amount of calories overall. Love the content!
When I worked at a non-profit that had a breakfast program, I would have LOVED one of these. We would get PALLETS of near-expiry eggs, milk, and fruit from the food bank, and so much would turn before being able to be used. Being able to preserve them for use even just weeks or months later, it would have saved so much food waste.
But the question is: which would be more cost-effective, buying the freeze dryer, having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff, then spending the money on electricity to freeze dry the food... or just waste the pallets of food but use the money you would have spent freeze drying to just purchase new food wholesale? I'm guessing it'd probably lean more towards the latter than the former.
@@cmgeorge12 "having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff" There is not inordinate amount of time needed to freezedry milk. You simply pour the milk from your container into the trays located in the machine and press start. Milk is the perfect food for this. Egg is a close second where all the work is cracking the eggs into the tray and throwing the shell away.
I have been waiting so long for you to do a Freeze Dryer video. No one goes to the depth you do on anything. And I've been wanting a deep dive on Freeze Dryers for a while. THANK YOU!
I like backpacking, but I hate many of the store-bought freeze dried meals. I had been toying with the idea for quite a while of getting one of these and making my own meals, but the cost is definitely what has kept me away.
Yeah, like he said, it won’t take that long to build up more freeze dried food than you can voluntarily consume… if it was just like… one tray, that should be more than enough for way more people, and it gets rid of all the inconsistency of trays results, and adding just _one_ tray as an addon wouldn’t be the same level of commitment for two sets.
@@Scaliad It used $2 of electricity per cycle. IDK If you've priced freeze dried food pouches but this wouldn't really be a problem. If they get the entry cost down to just about half of what it is it will be the next "must have" gadget on hiker tube.
There are plenty of ways to make your own meals using already dried products and or dehydrating your own items... But I think unless you have a lot of money to spend or intend on using it for selling to others as well, buying a freeze dryer is definitely not the best way to go 😆
Yeah, I wish this point got brought up. Trying a Mt. House and trying to replicate that would have been great to see. I agree though, unless someone is backpacking/hunting all the time, this doesn't make any sense.
Thank you Mr Connections. I'm happy to say you have only influenced me once or twice (I bought a heat pump tumble dryer after learning about heat pumps from your cool vids)
@@23Scadu I was at a clinic earlier today where they mentioned wanting to adjust theirs, and I mentioned I’d heard it was just two little adjustment screws on one side 😅
I think I will still buy one. I am a gardener, not a prepper, and I love preserving my harvest. I already can, pressure can, freeze, vacuum seal, and ferment, but I'd like to make powders (onion, pepper, garlic, herbs, cheese) as well as freeze dry my fruits (strawberries, blackberries, figs). I think I'd also like to make instant soup or broth. I don't mind time it takes, dehydration takes days, fermentation takes weeks.
making forms of products that you cannot make in any other way is the only sensible usecase i see for freeze driers, and for that they are obviously a no-brainer if you can afford it and bother to use it.
Exactly this. I like the idea of not having to go to the grocery store in the winter for fruits and veg. We also have chickens so being able to preserve the eggs over the winter is huge.
You're obviously not the target market. I've had one for about 5 years, I like it so much when they came out with their new models last year I bought one and sold my old one to a friend who was thrilled to get it. I have a large garden, orchard and livestock and mine works almost constantly much of the year. I run it off my solar power system so there's no energy cost. At the moment I'm cooking about 40 pounds of chile verde to freeze dry for when I'm on the road, just add hot water and you have a delicious dinner. They're great for someone who with access to surplus / cheap food and want to preserve it. When it comes to fruit, vegetables and meat everything I've tried has worked well. I have a friend who who works for a grocery, she brings me items the store is tossing because it's near the expiration date and I freeze dry it and we split the resulting product, a great arrangement. Yes, they're expensive. With some luck you'll reach a point in your life where not every decision has to be a financially sound one, luxuries you enjoy are ok. The other day I ended up at a dealer that sold those ATV things (not to buy one) and I casually asked how much they cost. He said the model I was looking usually ran about $35,000. That's for a toy with no useful purpose at all. All f the luxuries I've ever bought myself haven't added up to that much in 70 years, so it's a matter of perspective.
Theres an entirely different process for doing candy in the FD. You need to turn up the temp and turn on candy mode. It skips the freezing, has the option of prewarming the trays to soften the candy, then goes straight to vacuum without prefreezing. Some hard candies you even pre warm in an oven first.
I'm allergic to fresh onions. The stuff that makes most people's eyes water? Breaks me out in a rash and closes my throat. It's a fairly delicate protine, but the fumes from stir-fried flash-frozen onions can get me sometimes. Freeze dried onions, which can be found in the spice isle, are the best substitute in cooking. Just remember they will suck up a fair amount of liquid.
An excellent high-vacuum sealer makes much more sense. A good one can be had for about $300. Its advantage over typical home units, like Food Saver, is that you can vacuum seal liquids with no problems. Although you still need a freezer, it just makes more sense. Now I know why freeze-dried trail meals are so expensive. I wonder if the time is associated with a hygrometer. Great Video.
Maybe if you just commit to turning everything into powder and then reconstituting it as a drink, you could have a purely liquid diet. Who doesn't want a McDonald's cheeseburger shake? 😂
Kind of related, but I live in Fresno ca... Which is just a desert. Importantly in winter it can get down to the low 30's overnight and with a humidity in the 20% range which leads to a kind of city wide low level freeze dryer for people and other stuff. Skin sublimation sounds awful, but freeze dried skittles, (and some other things) are awesome
I imagine the freeze drying process - notably the freeze - breaks cell walls so when you rehydrate the food it no longer has the cellular strength it originally had.
Freeze drying seems like a hobby that eventually leads to some nice preserved food. Seems like a fun thing to get if you need or want something new to spend your free time doing if other preserved food methods aren't appealing to you.
its not a new thing and nothing worth freezedrying isnt already commercially available freezedried. The stuff not available in such a state also isnt worth the time and effort.
It would dry your cloths, so it is one. It's just not a very good one as it will take a day to dry them and might damage the fibres when it does as well.
Yeah I assumed it was going to be a clothes dryer with a dehumidifier (which would condense the water against the cold side of a heat pump) instead of a heating element
Physics info: in a vacuum, it is hard to suck anything out. There is just no air to pull things with it. The water vapour will hit random places, in this case the cold wall, and deposit there. If it hits the heated trays, it would just fly away again.
I noticed that the Costco in my area put this exact model of freeze dryer out on a prominent endcap a few weeks after the Connextras freeze dryer debut. It might just be a coincidence, but it might also mean that your influencer powers are greater than you thought. Will no one rid me of this turbulent freeze dryer?
Absolutely thrilled to watch this, I’ll happily consume any content of you messing with devices and gadgets for an hour and I trust your feedback and opinions implicitly
My first experience with freeze dried food was at Space Camp. Afterwards I was interviewed by the small town newspaper. The one comment I remember saying is "the strawberries still had the seeds!" I was 12. It was the 80s.
You're never going to see this, but take the FD ham and spray it with a spray bottle of water then stick it in the microwave. The microwave only works on water (to the best of my understanding) and the first thing the water will do is move around as much as it can before heating up by being too close to another water molecule...so I assume the water will find the lowest state of entropy rather quickly.
The microwave works on anything that conducts electricity somewhat, and any other substance that absorbs radio waves. This is why melamine and clay plates cannot be used in a microwave. I used to have a mishmash of all kinds of random dishes and mugs, and i always had to remember which mugs could be used to make hot chocolate in the microwave, and which couldn't. If you are a radio engineer and want to know what types of plastic are the best to use in radio electronics, you can stick them in a microwave oven for a few seconds and see if they heat up or not. If they do, you don't want them in radio circuits for various reasons.
They also work good on fats (better, actually) but there’s not likely to be much in that ham slice. And as said above me, technically any polar molecule will react. “Microwave safe” crockery actually means “microwave transparent” - some clays will absorb the microwaves and heat up the bowl/plate while leaving the food cold. (Leaving it five minutes with a lid on can spread the heat into the food, if you didn’t destroy your bowl/cup from heat fractures!)
@mfbfreak I was thinking the like "10 seconds in the microwave" kinda thing we do we brownies and cookies and such would be fine to rehydrate optimally. Also, if you're a big fan of hot cocoa or matcha latte's, look into the "Instant Pot Milk Frother", got a pair for $24/ea and it heats milk to something like 140⁰F but overfilling it will get it to a comfortable drinking temp (on the heat setting not froth). That and land o lakes cocoa's are top teir.
I have one and we love it. I'm far from a prepper but I've slowly been building up a food storage. I have a big enough garden and chickens, and it's a nice alternative to canning. Freeze dried mangos are amazing BTW, it's like candy.
So, the Scoville scale was originally based on _dilution_ until it was no longer detectable. Gas chromatography has since taken over, but the scale still reflects the original “100% is 16 million” scaling as a unit. So, by removing water from the jalapeño, you’re increasing the percentage of the substance that is capsaicin, and decreasing the percentage that is not. Thus, the result really should be higher on the Scoville scale.
@@SimuLord You can create homeopathic anything if you want. But then you shouldn't consume any water ever, as there might've once been a single particle of something nasty in it which will cause your instant death.
Plus, capsaicin bonds better to oils than water, so removing the water from the jalapeños give more contact area to the oils on your skin or whatever food you’re putting them on. Super concentrated little jalapeño burst, given even more power to strongly bind to oils in foods! It sounds pretty good tbh.
To cut grapes in half, put them onto a plate, put another plate upside down on top of them and slide the knife between the plates. It's a restaurant kitchen trick.
there is basically ONE good reason to freeze dry stuff: weight e.g. you can actually carry like a week of food in a backpack, and not have to worry about it, similarly with transport, you could have like a month or two of food in your car, and only have to worry about getting water even that is only relevant if you're like, going on long trips or something, which short of "I want to do it for fun", is applicable in only very few apocalypse scenarios, lol, in most cases it's better to just bunker down in a set location it would be pretty good as backup food, though, like, not even necessarily as apocalypse case, but even normally, if you e.g. suddenly find out something's happened, like, say, all your dry foods (rice, pasta, etc) got wet due to idk, natural disasters, or house breaking, or whatever, or like, got pests moving in, or whatever...or maybe you have a power outage for several days and either don't have a generator or run out of fuel...kinda extreme cases of course, lol or similarly could be nice food to keep in your car, as a backup, so if you end up having to drive more than you expected, you won't be starving, and getting baked in the summer or frozen in the winter won't affect the food quality much
loved this video! first time seeing your channel.. but the egg part is incredible... i cant believe they can reconstitute back into liquid form so easily. bravo!
Whenever I worked at Krystal's we used freeze dried onions to make the sliders. We would lay down a bed of these freeze dried onions, squirt some water on the flat top, lay all the meat down on top, put the lid on, and let them steam.
Hi, a tip for forcing hydrophobic powders to mix into liquids: Mix the powder with a tiny bit of liquid first, just enough to mix into a paste, then dilute the paste with more liquid (in as many steps as needed) until you have your desired proportions of powder to liquid. I do this all the time to make chocolate milk with baking cocoa.
Alec really loves the "box that makes things hot/cold wet/dry" genre
Don't we all love the science box?
Three of those things are good puns which go with "box".
And I'm sure Alec already has years of content to come prepared.
I bet $20 to my friend that he would make another heat pump related video within a year of the "Heat Pumps Are Not Hard" video. I won, the heat pump water heater video was released 11 months later.
EDIT: Spelling
Boxes are the best shape, after all ;-)
A-A steamed hams reference?!
At this time of year,
At this time of day,
In this part of RUclips,
Localized *entirely* within the Technology Connections Freeze Dryer video?
...Yes.
Aurora Borealis.
@@jul1440
May I see it?
@@mothman5114 ah... No.
@@mothman5114 Mmm.... No
Regarding the 'Magic Physics' for your ice buildup problem:
The cold spot does not attract the Water/Ice, the gaseus water moves to every place with roughly the same chance, but the cold area is the place where the water looses it's energy and is significantly less likely to leave again, so it accumulates there.
To add on that: the opening that the pump uses is much, much smaller than the surface of the drum and at such a low pressure you're not really creating a significant flow of gas to the pump, you're again just waiting for the molecules to more or less randomly find their way to the pump. In short: if the drum wasn't cooled during the drying, the pressure would significantly increase and the whole thing wouldn't work anymore.
Also from everything I've seen just investing less than $100 in a vacuum sealer can help prevent freezer burn and extend foods freezer life. Between that canning, drying, and fermenting and just buying some already freeze dried stuff you'd maybe want in an emergency seems more realistic. A small solar power system to run a chest freezer probably costs less too and can be sized up to include some other fun things that are useful.
Dude, for reconstituting you need to look to the astronauts for what they do.
Most importantly you want to weigh the ingredients before and after so you know how much water is missing. Eyeballing it absolutely will lead to very dry or very moist.
And then it's basically directly add warm water, warm not directly boiling and let it sit for a bit. Preferably sealed with the moisture against it directly.
Though the thought of you waving a slice of freeze dried ham in front of a mister is incredible and worth subscribing to the other channel for.
Thanks for being one of my favorite influencers. I've bought so many heat pumps on your recommendations.
I'm on his heat pump of the month subscription plan.
How many heat pumps do you have in your collection now?
@@Vid_Master 12 million
That word makes my soul contort and my heart seize
It isn’t just the heat pumps… through the magic of buying two…
Home canning is somewhat jarring 😂
This was probably the punniest video so far 😶
That's the line where I clicked the like button.
This was going to be my comment!
instantly dropped down to the comments when that landed. The deadpan delivery was a chef's kiss
i loved it!
It's up there with the banger from the Dietz video
We've had a freeze dryer on our list for almost 5 years but you're right, awfully pricey.
Surely he just saved you 3 grand?
@@PKWeaver74 Exactly!
@@GetOffMyyLawn He has it 'on the list'. He hasn't bought it yet.
@ nah, we're well aware of the pros and cons. Just a lot of cheaper/more practical items on the list first.
I guess the question is... Have you bought more than 3 grand worth of freeze dried food before?
Do you plan on doing it again?
@16:38 Kiwifruit yes! He used the full name. As a Kiwi i appreciate you not threatening to freeze drying us or our native birds!
Same here. I'm tired of folks trying to freeze dry me.
@@iamjustkiwiI don't know why they would, the fruit would be tastier!
I didn't know I neededn't it. Thank you for telling me!
@iap500 Hello and welcome to the show. Today we're on Technology Connections with some more hot/cold box shenanigans!
@@FailRaceFan Now usually I prefer a high/low thermal limit box but today I've decided to build a box with rapid thermal regulation change.
"It's quite sublime." I see what you did there!
Yup, got a laugh in the first 2 seconds. :D
That really set the tone, didn't it?
How is your comment 11 hours old when the video is 4 minutes old?
@@kuolettavaVidsEarly release for “members”.
The first 15 seconds of the video is puns, I'm sold.
Freeze drying works pretty well with fresh herbs especially when compared to conventional dehydration-try mint, basil, cilantro parsley, spring onions, etc.
Freeze dried herbs are the highest quality and very expensive.
For small amounts yes. But for large amounts freeze drying is too expensive and time consuming. I can keep basil fresh and green by blanching, vacuum sealing then freezing.
what is the point of drying herbs if you can just store seeds and grow them any time you want?
@@N1withaskillet is it because the method is really good or like with fruits where the cost of the equipment is so high that it only makes sense to freeze dry high quality products?
@@RipliWitanistraight blanchin'
Nothing is more pleasantly suprising than a Steamed Hams bit.
I love that reference then the kitchen and house burn down with Agnes Skinner inside yelling the house is on fire and Seymour then saying it's just the Northern Lights.
Aurora Borealis
You know what would be really interesting, from a weight and hence fuel savings transportation perspective? If freeze drying was super widespread in the groceries we bought, and we all had rehydrators in our homes - i.e. transporting everything but the water. This is probably not practical for one or more reasons, least of which would be food texture and taste getting messed with even after being rehydrated (powdered milk for example), in addition to the expense of freeze drying foods in the first place, but still an interesting idea to think about nonetheless. Given simply steaming them didn't work too well here, I'm guessing you might have to use some sort of pressurized device like a pressure cooker to force the water back in, versus simply letting it reenter.
Back to the Future Part 2 "Hydrate level 4 please" "You really know how to hydrate a pizza"
The really interesting thing, that I have worked on as a hobby for some time, is desert farming. You have all the sun you need for electricity for climate control and lyophilization, which could allow you to reuse the water. The truck that picks up the food would refill water supply.
Re: Freeze Drying Ice Cubes: iirc, James Hoffman did a video on making his own instant coffee with a freeze dryer much like this one, and he was able to use ice cube trays to freeze the coffee in a regular freezer, although he removed the cubes from the trays and smashed them up before loading into the dryer trays.
The reason the vacuum pump does not just suck the moisture out is because there is no such thing as sucking. It's similar to how there is no such thing as 'coldness' - it's just less heat. With vacuum just being less pressure, getting the last bit of air out becomes a waiting game as the molecules fly around randomly and only occasionally find their way into the vacuum hose. Similarly, the water molecules will fly off the product and bounce around the hot surfaces until they hit a surface cold enough to condense/freeze. Some will still make it down the vacuum hose but since the cold chamber walls are sort of everywhere, that's by far the most likely place they end up hitting.
I use a freeze dryer at my work to prepare samples for analysis for total mercury content and other geochemical processes. Our system is set to -50 C and 0.165 mbar, there is no programmed end time. We will leave our samples for at least three days , then if it passes a visual inspection, we would then physically check each sample for a "cold" feeling. If our sample feels cold to the touch, that implies a piece of ice is still remaining in the centre and that we need to continue the process.
We have an 18L collection chamber and often if the ice on the collector is too thick we need to pause the run defrost the collector, dry the inside of the unit, and then continue the run. I can only imagine that this at home unit is going to be closer to our older 2.5L unit where we had to defrost the system every two days so that the samples would maybe dry in a week.
I've been thinking, this machine will absolutely do a perfect job every time... if you just run it for multiple days in a row. Its trying its best to not seem like a giant waste of time and energy so its attempting to cut it off at the earliest possible moment to reasonably suspect its probably maybe dry. If you want to have food until 2050, you don't need it to be sort kinda dry, you need it to be effing surface of the sun dry
We use it at work as well, since according to some literature freeze drying biomass intended for the extraction of genomic DNA increases the yeild and decreases the shearing of DNA. It also allows for easier homogenisation and breakage of cell walls, which furthers the ammount of DNA extracted.
We also run it for around 48 hours at 0.5 mbar and then for another hour or so at 0.05 mbar final drying pressure, with -50C temperature.
Now I get why the food industry likes using egg powder and milk powder so much. This process saves so much on storage and shipping costs
And saftey. Way WAY safer.
Safer as in cancer in 40 years
@@RipliWitani By freeze drying?
@@RipliWitaniI don't think you have any clue about what you're talking about.
@@richardmillhousenixon they probably screech about SEeD oILs randomly too
I love the way you speak. Your choice of words. Almost like a teacher. Indeed you are a teacher. ❤
Bet you he's a James Burke fan. :) If you haven't seen the Connections series, you're in for a treat!
The preppers have their good points too. They're one of the biggest solar power advocates and when they treat you like a guest during install you get some of the freshest food I've ever had when they've got their own minifarm.
So... No magic of buying 2 of them?
So glad you got this video out before November. Really was considering one of these and enjoy the long format.
On another note can't wait for your November videos.
Through the magic of going bankrupt...
I was also considering buying one, but then I saw the minimum price of 1,300 someodd dollars and noped out immediately.
only for 'sets of trays'
I hope he does a freeze dried thanksgiving dinner.
I'm upset that I had to scroll to find this comment
1:03 Just bought one on your recommendation, thanks!
Totally. Anytime an influencer says, "this is something you cannot live without." Sign me up.
Omigosh ! What a lost opportunity for an affiliate link !
I bought 3, just to make sure its worth
@@bazooka712 Plus they make a great stocking stuffer.
I want one now, too!😊
As for the difficulty with reconstituting the milk: if you mix the desired amount of powdered milk with a *very small* amount of cold water, you should be able to create a slurry which will allow the fat to emulsify. Then you can add the rest of the water. I do this when making cocoa with pure cocoa powder (I don't use sugar). It faces the same basic challenge due to the high amount of fat in cocoa powder.
Just like Corn starch!
Yes, add a small amount of water and mix, then add a small amount of water and mix, then add... you get the point.
Yes, this is correct.
Milk contains spherules of fat that stay suspended in water, but removing the water destroys the vesicles, and allows the oil to coalesce.
To resuspend the fats, you need to add water and lots of stirring. If you do it with full water, it spills and froths and churns. Just use a tiny amount until it's all dissolved, then fill to 1/3 and stir hard (scrape bottom corners), then fill to 1/1 and it should come out nice.
Labor saving devices...
I was just writing up the exact same comment and figured I would take a look through the comments to see if anyone else already did since this is a pretty new video. Would like to see the results of the milk reconstitution using this method :)
Oil bath vacuum pumps like the one used for this machine don't much like moisture so you need a cold trap or another way to keep the water out of the pump. If it gets in the pump, it mixes with the oil and it's not very good.
The trouble is really for that amount of money (and your time) you can buy a whole lot of professionally freeze dried food from the big named vendors. Skittles themselves sell freeze dried
Freeze dried strawberries are the secret to why my homemade icecream is so good. I can jam a lot more strawberries into the same volume than you can with fresh and the flavor is way more concentrated.
I left the captions on while watching, and they were a treat with (increasing visible confusion) and (cryodessicatedly smooth jazz)
You forgot burying earthenware ceramic crocks below the frost line in your backyard. My mother in law used to do that around my aspen trees in order to store her Kimchi. Rest in peace grandma Kim.
I know what kimchi is from MASH.
The monster mash?
@@paisleyprince5280 I love MASH, but that surprises me. Never been to a Korean restaurant?
@@newq They've only made their way into the midwest recently, and still not anywhere near small towns.
Closest many people can get is Chinese takeout. Heartbreaking, really... Korean BBQ goes HARD.
We have the same problem whole milk, so we buy half and half. It lasts MUCH longer. And when it nears EOL, we make pudding to finish it off.
1 hour video on a niche tech product? I love this channel
Look to backpacking meals for inspiration. Smaller pieces of things like meat (also makes freeze drying faster) rehydrated with a carefully determined but still rough ratio of boiling water to freeze-dried product. Let sit for 5-20 minutes (depending on product density) and enjoy! Boiling water heats and hydrates without any significant further cooking.
Also there's an easy trick to calculating rehydration ratio (at least with traditional dehydrating but don't see why it wouldn't work for FD)-just weigh the food going in and then the dried product, and add about the difference to rehydrate (at least as a starting point to then trial and error from, since dehydration and rehydration aren't precisely reversible processes)
Also things like pemmican that last decades naturally.
I was thinking the veg you get in those meals is cubed up extremely, extremely, small
Assuming three meals a day, and that you can source ingredients for $10 less than you can buy a backpacking meal from REI, and you value your time at $0 an hour, you only need to supply 100 days of backpacking to make back your investment. I value my time, and don’t backpack nearly enough to justify that cost, but it is pretty neat. I’d buy one for 1k in a blink
a valiant attempt at making the math start mathing
To be honest, there isnt much to a freeze dryer.
If, and this is a weight bearing if, you where capable of programming a PID controller OR willing to manually cycle every step it would be around a thousand dollars to get an DIY kit together sourcing out machining that you cannot do yourself etc.
And if your a decent fabricator with access to some scrap fridges you could probably make one for less then $500 much less even depending on what you have around.
I use a commercial version for my farm. I sell them at the farmers market and gain profit from food that would normally be composted or thrown out. Freeze dryers are not for normies
@AnonymousAnarchist2 I DIY'd a setup a couple years back... It was definitely a process and pain in the @ss understanding how it worked with almost no content on freeze drying in a DIY freeze drier... Also, using homemade super coolant was it's own fun bag of safe handling..🤦♂️ They get the price down to 1k and it would definitely be worth it just as a matter of convience and ease of use... great content btw... very thorough and well explained... sublimation is one of the more confusing concepts to process cause it uses temp differential and vacuum pressure to do what dry ice does at room temperature...🤦♂️
Have you included the cost of electricity? This thing is really power hungry.
I consider you an edutainer. A very good one at that. Hats off.
Influencers are somewhere else on the "food chain" and... let's play nice and just leave it at that.
Oh he actually discusses them at 2:38
i mean influencing was always just a way to rebrand selling out.... using the phrase to include people that aren't shills only serves to help it accomplish that goal.
The whole mcdouble full bite, my sides 😅
You focused heavily on the prepper community as targets for this, but another community that commonly uses freeze dried food (and actually eats it!) are backpackers and campers. Head to your local REI and you’ll see tons and tons of freeze dried food, including astronaut ice cream.
I don’t think anyone backpacks enough for this to be economical, but I could see someone doing it to get the exact food they want.
You should look at those backpacking meals for ideas on what to freeze dry and how to reconstitute it (hint: just add boiling water).
I feel like most of the stuff that tastes good freeze dried, or is more convenient that way, you can already buy. I mean it's expensive, but so is owning and running this thing.
"Why is there ice in your dessicator, Alex?
"Ohohoho, no. That isn't ice, that's DRY! Dry from the dried hams we're having."
"Mmmm, dried hams!"
28:00 interesting thing I learned about instant coffee. For the best prep, you should use a little cold water in the cup, stir in the crystals, then add hot water after. And it's WAY better then. Maybe a strategy for the freeze dried coffee.
At 19:12 you can actually see Alec regret the choice to leave hotel management.
He had to pretend to choke on the word "influencer" before, but this is all authentic!
I work at a Comfort Inn and I would love to have Alec as a coworker or manager 😊
7:12 pm? Lol
@@4rumaniyou can't be serious
@@4rumani nineteen minutes and twelve seconds
thank you for your service
Another video about heat pumps has hit the Technology Connections
"You are signing up for hours and hours of work..." Sounds like subscribing to Technology Connections!
😂😂😂
Watching the videos isn't work tho?
@@YannickBobut going into a deep dive after he makes a video is
@@ArmyOfThree1000 you're right :/
@@YannickBo lol have fun on your next 2am RUclips deep dive on insert “niche topic” here
the walls form a "Cold Trap" (wiki article is pretty good) that preferentially collects the ice vs it getting into the vacuum pump's oil and damaging it.
How is a vacuum pump not suitable for collecting moisture in the air, would it not collect condensation just as an air compressor does from the humidity in the air?
@@matt45540 a vacuum pump does not feature the tank as a condenser for the moisture. also it's lostly piston compressors and these are wayy less wear-prone then vane-based vacuum pumps on degraded oil.
also airtool compressors draw a maximum of air humidity. A/C evacuation vacuum pumps and this unit (basically the same) draw extra moist air through them which degrades the oil extra fast.
Neat
@@matt45540pumps like this aren't designed to have water or particulates in the volume it pumps. Sublimated ice is a gas, but when it hits the vanes and the pressure increases inside the pump, it condenses as water. And think about how the volume that you are pumping is almost entirely composed of gaseous H2O. Very little would be N2/O2/CO2 (air).
The water then continually coats the downstream portion of the pump, as long as its pumping water it will be condensing. This can displace oil or directly corrode the moving parts. The pump could still run like this for some time but it does add additional wear and significantly lowers the life span of the equipment the more you run it like that.
most industrial pumps that deal with water will have cold traps, either directly inline with the pump or as a separate system (like this freeze drier).
A pump that can handle water will either be a lot more money, or it won't be able to pump to as low of a pressure.
why doesn't air do the same thing since its humid? Well, air isn't nearly as wet, even at 100% humidity, the volume would be way less % of H2O vs. the above example. And the small amount of water that does happen to condense on the exhaust side of the pump would be nearly as quickly blown away/absorbed by the air blowing past it. And the condensation slows the lower your pressure goes, until you reach base pressure.
sorry if I'm overexplaining. I worked 20 years on vacuum systems but I never did pump maintenance, so I will take correction from a pump expert. My expertise is in high vacuum systems primarily.
Consider the sublimated water molecule like a little bullet.
They fire off kinda randomly and bounce around until they hit the cold walls.
When they do, they either lose some energy to the wall and bounce away, or they stick.
The evacuated chamber doesn't have enough air left to create a suction towards the pump inlet.
Some water molecules will happen to bounce their way into it, but the cold walls have WAY more surface area.
So most of the water builds up as ice along the sides
Before freeze-drying became popular, freezer-dryers, especially from the brand you bought, had a starting price of $600 only. That used to be affordable, but thanks to influencers, the prices just inflated in less than 2 years.
THANK YOU!!! I've been stressing about this exact purchase. Great timing!
As someone who has dabbled with the thought of "having a freeze-dryer might be fun", thanks, this video helped put that thought to bed for another few years. I would like to see more successes/failures/interestings, so will be looking forward to the follow-up.
You can vacuum seal your mason jars with either a lid with a valve or one of those vacuum sealers that pull the air out with a normal lids. We use those to store items (like nuts) that go rancid before you can eat them alll.
Thank you for buying a freeze dryer so I didn't have to. I _was_ considering one to dry out the 50lbs of peppers I grew this year but when I realized they were multiple thousands of dollars and barely fit anything in them I changed my mind.
Honestly just get a regular nesco food dryer. I use mine on peppers and then put them in beans and they taste great
Yeah my parents had one and it died in the first year. They're best for drying hash which is likely why they've exploded in recent years. For peppers just slice and dry at the lowest temperature of a standard oven for 10-15 hours. They're way better than dehydrators. The heat activates flavors etc. ❤
I use an air fryer on its lowest setting (65deg) and reset it once it maxes it's timer after an hour - does the job but I do want to upgrade one day. Not sure how well it will work for capsicums but works for strawberries if you slice them thin, only takes about 2 hours if both sides are exposed. The hardest part is not guzzling them before canning them.
Even in the middle of my strawberry glut I had to buy a pack of freeze dried ones though, I just love the texture. And strawberries.
Anyway a normal food dehydrator is probably a good option for you if your convection oven(s) aren't cutting it.
@Farimira you can often find normal food dehydrators at thrift shops if you have them where you are. They're an item people buy, use a few times, then get tired of it and donate lol
@strayiggytv thanks for the tip!
This is the official TC mukbang
Thank you so much for doing this video! I have been debating getting one of these recently, and this is literally the best video that I could’ve ever watched and I never would’ve thought you would’ve done one on freeze-drying but once again surprised and impressed
Strawberries work really well because they have low sugar, and nearly all the flavor-including the sweetness-is actually volatile chemicals that you lose when you heat them. So freeze drying concentrates them, and you can add them to other strawberries (preferably macerated) to get double strawberry flavor.
thank you for being our trustworthy scout for all things we could think of doing considering household technology. i trust you.
i just want you to know i very rarely have any interest in the actual subject matter of your videos but your explanations, visuals, and your general passion (or very least, enthusiastic interest!) for what you talk about is the whole reason i come back to watch. making me sit down and watch and really enjoy a video about freeze dryers is wild. a crazy skill to have, big props to Big Tech’ ‘Nections
I think you made a lot of great points in this video as someone who has been keeping an eye on these products due to how expensive they are. I think the one thing that would be interesting to look into is from the camping/hiking community. A lot of the freeze dried meals you can buy online that actually taste good are fairly expensive for a very small amount of calories overall. Love the content!
Thank you for your service.
You have saved me thinking about buying one of these every 6 months or so.
When I worked at a non-profit that had a breakfast program, I would have LOVED one of these. We would get PALLETS of near-expiry eggs, milk, and fruit from the food bank, and so much would turn before being able to be used. Being able to preserve them for use even just weeks or months later, it would have saved so much food waste.
From the sound of it, you'd need a room full of them to handle that much food.
@@RobertDeCaireor just a bigger one.
But the question is: which would be more cost-effective, buying the freeze dryer, having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff, then spending the money on electricity to freeze dry the food... or just waste the pallets of food but use the money you would have spent freeze drying to just purchase new food wholesale? I'm guessing it'd probably lean more towards the latter than the former.
@@cmgeorge12 "having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff"
There is not inordinate amount of time needed to freezedry milk.
You simply pour the milk from your container into the trays located in the machine and press start.
Milk is the perfect food for this.
Egg is a close second where all the work is cracking the eggs into the tray and throwing the shell away.
@@PappaTom-ub3ht But there is the 16+ hours of runtime, and the associated energy use.
I have been waiting so long for you to do a Freeze Dryer video. No one goes to the depth you do on anything. And I've been wanting a deep dive on Freeze Dryers for a while. THANK YOU!
I like backpacking, but I hate many of the store-bought freeze dried meals. I had been toying with the idea for quite a while of getting one of these and making my own meals, but the cost is definitely what has kept me away.
Yeah, like he said, it won’t take that long to build up more freeze dried food than you can voluntarily consume… if it was just like… one tray, that should be more than enough for way more people, and it gets rid of all the inconsistency of trays results, and adding just _one_ tray as an addon wouldn’t be the same level of commitment for two sets.
Not just the cost of the dryer, but they use a lot of electricity...
@@Scaliad It used $2 of electricity per cycle. IDK If you've priced freeze dried food pouches but this wouldn't really be a problem. If they get the entry cost down to just about half of what it is it will be the next "must have" gadget on hiker tube.
There are plenty of ways to make your own meals using already dried products and or dehydrating your own items... But I think unless you have a lot of money to spend or intend on using it for selling to others as well, buying a freeze dryer is definitely not the best way to go 😆
Yeah, I wish this point got brought up. Trying a Mt. House and trying to replicate that would have been great to see. I agree though, unless someone is backpacking/hunting all the time, this doesn't make any sense.
I've been pretty curious about these appliances for awhile, thanks for doing a deep dive!
19:22 that mic is really picking up on the crunch audio and giving us the full experience 😁👍🍔
Thank you Mr Connections. I'm happy to say you have only influenced me once or twice (I bought a heat pump tumble dryer after learning about heat pumps from your cool vids)
He influenced me to adjust an automatic door closer that had been bothering me in my apartment building. My life is much better now.
Alec influenced me to buy the cheapest dish detergent I can find.
@@23Scadu I was at a clinic earlier today where they mentioned wanting to adjust theirs, and I mentioned I’d heard it was just two little adjustment screws on one side 😅
@@jul1440 He was right again, powdered is the GOAT. Lasts for eternity and washes just as well. That's another good one!
I think I will still buy one. I am a gardener, not a prepper, and I love preserving my harvest. I already can, pressure can, freeze, vacuum seal, and ferment, but I'd like to make powders (onion, pepper, garlic, herbs, cheese) as well as freeze dry my fruits (strawberries, blackberries, figs). I think I'd also like to make instant soup or broth. I don't mind time it takes, dehydration takes days, fermentation takes weeks.
making forms of products that you cannot make in any other way is the only sensible usecase i see for freeze driers, and for that they are obviously a no-brainer if you can afford it and bother to use it.
What would be the benefit for you in freeze drying the fruits instead of just freezing them?
@@Jehty_ You imagine it and name it, and it's probably a benefit.
@@Ferd414 and that means what exactly?
Exactly this. I like the idea of not having to go to the grocery store in the winter for fruits and veg. We also have chickens so being able to preserve the eggs over the winter is huge.
@technology connections your videos and jokes fill me with such joy. It’s like I am a little boy again. Please never change
You're obviously not the target market. I've had one for about 5 years, I like it so much when they came out with their new models last year I bought one and sold my old one to a friend who was thrilled to get it. I have a large garden, orchard and livestock and mine works almost constantly much of the year. I run it off my solar power system so there's no energy cost. At the moment I'm cooking about 40 pounds of chile verde to freeze dry for when I'm on the road, just add hot water and you have a delicious dinner. They're great for someone who with access to surplus / cheap food and want to preserve it. When it comes to fruit, vegetables and meat everything I've tried has worked well. I have a friend who who works for a grocery, she brings me items the store is tossing because it's near the expiration date and I freeze dry it and we split the resulting product, a great arrangement.
Yes, they're expensive. With some luck you'll reach a point in your life where not every decision has to be a financially sound one, luxuries you enjoy are ok. The other day I ended up at a dealer that sold those ATV things (not to buy one) and I casually asked how much they cost. He said the model I was looking usually ran about $35,000. That's for a toy with no useful purpose at all. All f the luxuries I've ever bought myself haven't added up to that much in 70 years, so it's a matter of perspective.
3:49 that pun got a chuckle out of me
Yes😂
"It's quite sublime"
REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. A PUN PATROL HAS BEEN DISPATCHED TO YOUR LOCATION.
Theres an entirely different process for doing candy in the FD. You need to turn up the temp and turn on candy mode. It skips the freezing, has the option of prewarming the trays to soften the candy, then goes straight to vacuum without prefreezing. Some hard candies you even pre warm in an oven first.
So it's not really freeze-drying? Sounds like something I could build out of parts I have lying around.
I'm allergic to fresh onions. The stuff that makes most people's eyes water? Breaks me out in a rash and closes my throat. It's a fairly delicate protine, but the fumes from stir-fried flash-frozen onions can get me sometimes. Freeze dried onions, which can be found in the spice isle, are the best substitute in cooking. Just remember they will suck up a fair amount of liquid.
Your music selection while trying the mcdonalds burger is giving DANKPODS VIBES
I love the wonderful world of refrigeration and our brown coated Willy Wonka-esque guide!
An excellent high-vacuum sealer makes much more sense. A good one can be had for about $300. Its advantage over typical home units, like Food Saver, is that you can vacuum seal liquids with no problems. Although you still need a freezer, it just makes more sense. Now I know why freeze-dried trail meals are so expensive. I wonder if the time is associated with a hygrometer. Great Video.
Can you recommend a company/model from experience for the sealer?
A good one will set you back about 1k.
Maybe if you just commit to turning everything into powder and then reconstituting it as a drink, you could have a purely liquid diet. Who doesn't want a McDonald's cheeseburger shake? 😂
Uh, me - that honestly sounds horrible
The only 'food' item worth buying at McDeaths is their coffee.
I've seen someone turn a freeze dried steak into a powder and doing just that. but it didn't taste all that good
The 1960s vision of "future food"...
@@Robnord1 Only if you win the lawsuit.
Kind of related, but I live in Fresno ca... Which is just a desert. Importantly in winter it can get down to the low 30's overnight and with a humidity in the 20% range which leads to a kind of city wide low level freeze dryer for people and other stuff.
Skin sublimation sounds awful, but freeze dried skittles, (and some other things) are awesome
I imagine the freeze drying process - notably the freeze - breaks cell walls so when you rehydrate the food it no longer has the cellular strength it originally had.
Freeze drying seems like a hobby that eventually leads to some nice preserved food. Seems like a fun thing to get if you need or want something new to spend your free time doing if other preserved food methods aren't appealing to you.
That price point tho
@@justaguy5770
Thats an argument for litterally any product, try a better argument like the ones Alec used in this video thanks.
its not a new thing and nothing worth freezedrying isnt already commercially available freezedried.
The stuff not available in such a state also isnt worth the time and effort.
@@artsyscrub3226every other product has an upfront cost of $3000 at the very least? That's literally the cheapest freeze dryer available.
@@artsyscrub3226Alec literally used price point as an argument against buying it in the video
I definitely wasn't initially thinking this was a clothes dryer, except instead of heat it used cold somehow
I mean, technically it is?
I've used winter weather to dry my clothes before, so you probably *could* do that.
It would dry your cloths, so it is one. It's just not a very good one as it will take a day to dry them and might damage the fibres when it does as well.
Yeah I assumed it was going to be a clothes dryer with a dehumidifier (which would condense the water against the cold side of a heat pump) instead of a heating element
@@wolfgangmcq I mean, that is kind of what it does, just with an added vacuum pump. So you weren't that far off.
27:25 James Hoffmann moment. He actually made a video using this same machine 6 months ago. "Making My Own Instant Coffee: Can I Make It Taste Good?"
Physics info: in a vacuum, it is hard to suck anything out. There is just no air to pull things with it. The water vapour will hit random places, in this case the cold wall, and deposit there. If it hits the heated trays, it would just fly away again.
Again thank you for unit conversions
I noticed that the Costco in my area put this exact model of freeze dryer out on a prominent endcap a few weeks after the Connextras freeze dryer debut. It might just be a coincidence, but it might also mean that your influencer powers are greater than you thought.
Will no one rid me of this turbulent freeze dryer?
It's simply that it's the only line of freeze dryers that is practical for home or small business use, and also the cheapest.
I think this is just a popular model. I have the same one
@@SafeRemain Is there any other company besides Harvest Right that makes home freeze dryers? I haven't heard of one.
Standing ovation for the jarring joke. Well done, sir. Brava!
Absolutely thrilled to watch this, I’ll happily consume any content of you messing with devices and gadgets for an hour and I trust your feedback and opinions implicitly
Blend it before you stick it in the water and you can use it as bouillon
59:45 RED ALERT! RED ALERT! Typo detected! (in the closed captions)
My first experience with freeze dried food was at Space Camp. Afterwards I was interviewed by the small town newspaper. The one comment I remember saying is "the strawberries still had the seeds!" I was 12. It was the 80s.
freeze dried refried beans are great for hiking. They reconstitute really well. Also, look up a video on how professional chefs slice grapes in half.
Yes, they come out tasting like fresh refried beans!
You're never going to see this, but take the FD ham and spray it with a spray bottle of water then stick it in the microwave. The microwave only works on water (to the best of my understanding) and the first thing the water will do is move around as much as it can before heating up by being too close to another water molecule...so I assume the water will find the lowest state of entropy rather quickly.
The microwave works on anything that conducts electricity somewhat, and any other substance that absorbs radio waves. This is why melamine and clay plates cannot be used in a microwave. I used to have a mishmash of all kinds of random dishes and mugs, and i always had to remember which mugs could be used to make hot chocolate in the microwave, and which couldn't.
If you are a radio engineer and want to know what types of plastic are the best to use in radio electronics, you can stick them in a microwave oven for a few seconds and see if they heat up or not. If they do, you don't want them in radio circuits for various reasons.
They also work good on fats (better, actually) but there’s not likely to be much in that ham slice.
And as said above me, technically any polar molecule will react. “Microwave safe” crockery actually means “microwave transparent” - some clays will absorb the microwaves and heat up the bowl/plate while leaving the food cold. (Leaving it five minutes with a lid on can spread the heat into the food, if you didn’t destroy your bowl/cup from heat fractures!)
@mfbfreak I was thinking the like "10 seconds in the microwave" kinda thing we do we brownies and cookies and such would be fine to rehydrate optimally.
Also, if you're a big fan of hot cocoa or matcha latte's, look into the "Instant Pot Milk Frother", got a pair for $24/ea and it heats milk to something like 140⁰F but overfilling it will get it to a comfortable drinking temp (on the heat setting not froth). That and land o lakes cocoa's are top teir.
I have one and we love it. I'm far from a prepper but I've slowly been building up a food storage. I have a big enough garden and chickens, and it's a nice alternative to canning. Freeze dried mangos are amazing BTW, it's like candy.
Much respect for the string of jokes at the start of the video.
So, the Scoville scale was originally based on _dilution_ until it was no longer detectable. Gas chromatography has since taken over, but the scale still reflects the original “100% is 16 million” scaling as a unit. So, by removing water from the jalapeño, you’re increasing the percentage of the substance that is capsaicin, and decreasing the percentage that is not. Thus, the result really should be higher on the Scoville scale.
This is great info, thank you! love it.
Does this mean you can create homeopathic hot sauce if you put a Carolina reaper pepper into enough water to dilute it? 🤪
This is why dried Peppers have different names. Jalapeño is Chipotle
@@SimuLord You can create homeopathic anything if you want. But then you shouldn't consume any water ever, as there might've once been a single particle of something nasty in it which will cause your instant death.
Plus, capsaicin bonds better to oils than water, so removing the water from the jalapeños give more contact area to the oils on your skin or whatever food you’re putting them on. Super concentrated little jalapeño burst, given even more power to strongly bind to oils in foods! It sounds pretty good tbh.
1 day until no effort November... and this video shows up... perfect
To cut grapes in half, put them onto a plate, put another plate upside down on top of them and slide the knife between the plates. It's a restaurant kitchen trick.
Just don't microwave them afterwards unless you want a light show
The visuals and sound of you eating a Freeze dried Cheeseburger from McDonalds is unironically one of the funniest moments in RUclips history. Bravo.
Awesome, this was at the top of my list of episodes. Thanks
there is basically ONE good reason to freeze dry stuff: weight
e.g. you can actually carry like a week of food in a backpack, and not have to worry about it, similarly with transport, you could have like a month or two of food in your car, and only have to worry about getting water
even that is only relevant if you're like, going on long trips or something, which short of "I want to do it for fun", is applicable in only very few apocalypse scenarios, lol, in most cases it's better to just bunker down in a set location
it would be pretty good as backup food, though, like, not even necessarily as apocalypse case, but even normally, if you e.g. suddenly find out something's happened, like, say, all your dry foods (rice, pasta, etc) got wet due to idk, natural disasters, or house breaking, or whatever, or like, got pests moving in, or whatever...or maybe you have a power outage for several days and either don't have a generator or run out of fuel...kinda extreme cases of course, lol
or similarly could be nice food to keep in your car, as a backup, so if you end up having to drive more than you expected, you won't be starving, and getting baked in the summer or frozen in the winter won't affect the food quality much
loved this video! first time seeing your channel.. but the egg part is incredible... i cant believe they can reconstitute back into liquid form so easily. bravo!
Watch the toaster video.. Life changing!
Emmy Made got pretty similar results dehydrating eggs in a low oven, for what it’s worth 😊
An hour long video? Just before November? Sounds exciting!
Whenever I worked at Krystal's we used freeze dried onions to make the sliders. We would lay down a bed of these freeze dried onions, squirt some water on the flat top, lay all the meat down on top, put the lid on, and let them steam.
Hi, a tip for forcing hydrophobic powders to mix into liquids:
Mix the powder with a tiny bit of liquid first, just enough to mix into a paste, then dilute the paste with more liquid (in as many steps as needed) until you have your desired proportions of powder to liquid. I do this all the time to make chocolate milk with baking cocoa.
Your delivery is so much fun to watch. You even make mistakes hilarious. Still my favorite "influencer" on RUclips.
"There's home canning, though personally I find this somewhat jarring."
This here is why I love your channel so very much.
FU- oh damnit, I missed that the first time!