Freeze Dried and Dehydrated Meals: Which Is The Far better Method for Long Time period Survival Meals Storage
The Method of Freeze-Drying
Freeze-drying is a complex method of preserving clean or previously-cooked foods by getting rid of up to 98% of the food’s dampness, leaving intact the food’s texture, flavor, aroma and dietary worth.
The approach requires that the refreshing or cooked foods be quickly frozen at temperatures as low as -50°C. The frozen foodstuff is then put into a vacuum chamber. This vacuum chamber lowers the strain, and raises the temperature to just about 0°C.
At this distinct temperature and strain, the ice crystals in the foods evaporate into water vapor, bypassing water’s liquid form, through a approach referred to as sublimation.
This process preserves the mobile composition and nutritional content of the food, resulting in a merchandise that, when rehydrated, quite closely resembles the first meals.
The process also helps prevent the drinking water from being reabsorbed by the food and therefore decreases its excess weight drastically.
Most meals objects this kind of as fruits, veggies and meats are nicely-suited to freeze-drying, and can be utilised for long-expression foods storage and preservation.
The Approach of Dehydration
Dehydrating food is a foods preservation technique which has been utilized for centuries. Indigenous Americans dehydrated their buffalo kills in their hunting camps to make it simpler to transportation. Pemmican (a dehydrated concoction of buffalo meat combined with excess fat and berries) was a staple of numerous of the nomadic North American tribes. This minimal-warmth dehydration method associated possibly air drying (with close by campfires), or solar drying strips of meat on drying racks.
Dehydrators are a present day method for little by little removing the dampness from food without truly cooking it. A drawback of dehydration is the constrained amount of meals which can be dried at a single time. The positive factor of dehydration is that this method of processing for food storage can be very easily accomplished at house.
How Do These Two Methods Influence the Foods?
Freeze-dried foods protect significantly of the original color, condition, aroma and freshness of fruits, greens and meats. Freeze-dried foods does not generally contain additives or preservatives, so it remains true to its authentic type. And the appear, texture and taste of the meals remains after re-hydration.
Not like low-warmth dehydration, freeze-drying enables for the preservation of pre-cooked foods, which includes recipes these kinds of as soups, stews, stroganoff, and the like. An obvious benefit is that considering that the food was prepared in its entirety prior to freeze-drying, all you want to do is simply incorporate h2o, then warmth for a few minutes in buy to create luxurious meals.
Rehydrating freeze-dried meals requires just a handful of minutes, merely by including boiling h2o. Some food items, like numerous fruits and veggies, require no re-hydration prior to eating.
Dehydrated food items shrink during processing as the humidity is eliminated. So the food item itself is substantially scaled-down than its original size.
The re-hydration time of dehydrated food items normally takes a little bit for a longer time than freeze-dried, but it stills preferences like the authentic sort of the foods. Some dehydrated meals contain added substances to increase flavors or aid in preservation. As with freeze-dried fruits and vegetables, dehydrated fruits and veggies can be eaten with out any re-hydration.
Each strategies of food preservation enhance the long-phrase storage life of foodstuff. Most commercially developed freeze-dried and dehydrated food items have a shelf existence of 15 to twenty years, if correctly packaged and saved in a awesome, dry surroundings.
In addition to their being a trustworthy resource of foodstuff in an crisis or long-term survival situation, due to the fact of their gentle excess weight and simplicity of portability, these meals are also fantastic for using on tenting, hiking and searching excursions. They are also a sensible decision to hold in an unexpected emergency highway-side package for the vehicle, or in your bug out bag.
If you select to maintain these food items in your car as portion of an crisis kit, you should remember to rotate them periodically. Temperatures in a car can attain extremes, the two sizzling and chilly. Higher warmth as nicely as steady temperature fluctuations add to faster degradation of equally dehydrated and freeze-dried foodstuff.
Which Variety is Far better for Consumption?
Everyone is various, and every individual has their possess individual tastes and choices. With that in mind, there are a number of issues to contemplate just before making a determination amongst freeze-dried or dehydrated foodstuff.
Property-grown fruits and veggies are greater preserved via dehydration, since the common individual can’t pay for the expensive equipment employed in freeze-drying.
Foodstuff utilised in daily cooking and food preparing ought to most likely be freeze-dried. This permits the food to be speedily re-hydrated as it is cooked prior to serving. If accessibility and portability are important, than possibly type of preserved meals ought to fulfill individuals distinct needs. After once more, it’s a issue of personalized choices.
In a nutshell, equally dehydrated and freeze-dried foods are exceptional options for long-expression food storage, as properly as for day-to-day use or for mountaineering, camping, and so forth. Salads -excess weight, moveable, convenient foodstuff. The main variation is that freeze-dried meals are likely to far better preserve the condition, texture and flavors of the original foodstuff.
Most individuals will discover that a combination will operate very best for their demands. One-product foodstuff these kinds of as vegetables, potatoes, and other staples and grains are effectively-suited to lower-heat dehydration. Freeze-drying is far more appropriate for meats and fruits (whose texture can be preserved), and for pre-cooked meals with a variety of elements such as soups, stews and sauces.