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Is there be anything non-chocolate that could coat something freeze dried and keep it from absorbing moisture.

Kerry, After you dip freeze dried food into chocolate, do they stay crunchy or go soft. If they go soft, do you need to keep them refrigerated so they do not spoil?

When I seal my jars I leave the rings on, but loosen them about an 1/8 to 1/4 turn to allow the lid to let the air out. I also have to leave the rings on because when I seal in my chamber vac, the quart jars have to lay on their side. Whenever I reseal a jar, I make sure there are no particles on the lip or lid. The only time I have had a vacuum failure was due to the jar having a crack.

This is how I decide what sealing method to use. Items I use frequently just keep in a non vacuum sealed mason jar. The most important thing is just to keep the food from absorbing moisture. Items I use infrequently or within 12 months I vacuum seal the mason jar. That keeps out the moisture and minimizes any oxidation. If I was planning to keep items for a longer term, them I would consider mylar with oxygen absorbers. So far I have not done any mylar storage. Everything I have done gets used too fast! Another option is a chamber vac with nitrogen backfill. I would love to get one of these, but I have no place I could put one or the tank.

There are various conversion calculators out there that can give you this value. A quick search shows that 1000 millitorr is about .04 inches are mercury. Putting that into terms of bigger numbers being a larger vacuum would be in the 29.8 inch range. One atmosphere is 29.92 inches mercury. Essentially the HR machine pulls a much better vacuum than my chamber vac and leaves the Foodsaver in the dust.

Peggy, Sorry to hear about the damage to the freeze dryer. It must be really frustrating, especially with Christmas approaching. HR boxes them very well. It must have taken a good fall or been run through with a forklift to damage it.

I have not used any oxygen absorbers in mine. I use my chamber vac to seal my jars. There is a picture of that somewhere earlier in this thread. Most of my dehydrating is centered around things like fruits, that I do not use fast enough before they spoil. Nothing really stays stored very long before it gets used. I have done a few raw burger patties. One I cooked right away and it was fine. The other I vacuumed sealed for week before trying. It took a little longer absorb water because of the meat getting compressed. Still it cooked okay. I also did a slice of cooked pork as a test. That did turn out to be a bit tough. I probably will not try pork again. I have to also add I am glad Kerry started this thread. I do not think HR will get around to starting a forum on their own. It is nice to be able to share experiences with other freeze dryer owners.

BGW, I currently store all the food I dry in quart and pint size jars. The only vacuum failure I had was due to a jar that had a crack in it. Beyond that I just make sure the lids and lip of the jar are clean and free of any debris. And inspect your jar for cracks before using.

Were the mashed potatoes made from fresh potatoes or from instant? I have thought about freeze drying mashed potatoes, but freeze drying it from instant would not seem to provide any advantages.

I freeze dried my first batch of sour cream. Overall I like the results, but as others had mentioned it loses some of its thickness. I am wondering if adding something like cornstarch, gelatin or something else could be added to get the consistency back. I did also notice that the sour cream is a little grainy with hand mixing, but using my hand blender smoothed it out.

Kerry, I have had the same problem with needing to reseat the seal on mine after a stop. Fortunately I was there or the machine would have been sucking air and blowing oil all day. All the more reason HR should update their firmware to automatically turn off the vacuum pump if it can't get below 1000 milliTor in a certain amount of time. Anymore I keep my vacuum pump turned off and turn it on manually to be sure a vacuum is getting pulled. How did you like the freeze dried raspberries. I did a 4 pound frozen bag from Sams, but they were too strong and bitter for my tastes. How does the freeze dried milk reconstitute compared to fresh.

Kerry, I will be interested in how the rice/peas/meat works. Just curious, do you use any seasonings/spices with that mix? I am not much of an expert when it comes to seasoning things well.

A few more items you might add to the list. 1. Make sure drain valve is open when the unit is finally turned off. Somehow I actually managed to do this one. Ended with water all over the floor! 2. Make sure drain bucket is empty of water. I read elsewhere where someone had manged to fill up the drain bucket enough to submerge the drain tube. When they opened up drain valve to release the vacuum, water was sucked up into the chamber and making a big mess and soaking the food. I have not done this one yet, but give me time. 3.Make sure drain tube is in the bucket! Done this one, but caught it before I had as big a mess as in 1.

I do the same cup trick on mine as well. That works ok for some mild sptting, but not today.

This is a question to Harvest Right. Is there a timeout somewhere so if a vacuum is not achieved withing a certain amount of time, then shut off the vacuum pump. I ran into a situation today where I forgot to close the drain valve after a restart. An hour or so later I noticed this haze in the house. I checked the FD and sure enough it was blowing an oil mist all over. I had just refilled the oil and I am guessing it blew about a quarter of its oil out. If I had not been home, it could have blown out all the oil from the pump and damaged it. I would even say there is a potential for a fire in this type of situation. If there is not a vacuum timeout feature, then I think one should be added. I would not think it would be too hard to add a check to the firmware to turn off the vacuum pump if some amount of vacuum is not pulled in a certain amount of time.

Mike, thanks for the tips. I tried a few slices of already cooked port last week. I was not really impressed with the results after rehydration. It came out a little tough once rehydrated. I probably will not try it again, unless I do pork dices that I can through in a recipe.I did have some leftover precooked stew meat taking up space in the freezer that I dried last week. Those came out nicely. and are not too bad just eaten dry. Almost like kibbles for people. Deryn, So far I have just bought presliced apples from Sams, which being pre-sliced and not paying for the weight of the core, is not too bad of a deal IMO. When I do some whole fruit, I have some fruit saver powder that I will use to keep it from browning before it freezes.

Just curious if any HR owners have oil appearing under their vacuum pumps. I do to not think it is coming from the vent. It appears to be coming. from the shaft seal. It does not appear to be coming from the oil drain plug. I just added about a quarter site glass full to get the oil level back up. I added about a 1/2 site glass full a few weeks back.

Based on what I have seen so far with my machine, if it has not dropped below 500mT, then something has still not fully dried out. When I was doing strawberries last weekend (about 4 lbs), the machine said it was done but the reading had not quite gotten below 500mT. I have an infrared camera, so I imaged the trays. Sure enough, there were a few cold berries in mix. So back into the machine for a few more hours. When that finished, the pressure was in the low 400mT range. When I checked them again, there were no cold spots. So I knew everything had dried. I did not think to get pictures when I did this. Next time I will remember and post them. You may also noticed that I said I did 4 pounds instead of the 3 pounds that I had been limiting myself to. Based on Mikes earlier comments, I decided to up the amount I normally put in.It did take longer, but it did finish. I will try it with 4 pounds when I do a batch of blueberries this weekend and see how well that works.

Regarding sweet cherries. I did a similar experiment with a bag of fresh sweet cherries I had pitted. I had a similar result as Mike with the Maricano cherries. They do not quite get cruchy, but instead becimes almost candy like. Maybe like a hard taffy in consistency. I kept them in a mason jar over several weeks and ate them and watched them for spoilage. They seemed to hold up just fine over the short term. Not sure how they would hold up over a year, but at least a month seemed to be okay.

Tom, I figure it costs me about $1 per pound of wet food processed. That based on about 10 cents/kwH where I am at and assuming about 10 amps current based on what Harvest Right has said. Still if I compare that to the cost of buying the same items already freeze dried, I figure I am paying about 1/2 to 2/3 the cost of what could be bought in a #10 can. Freeze dried meats are even more absurdly priced.if purchased direct. I figure after a few hundred times, the machine will have paid for itself. And of course some things you just can not find for sale.at any price. You have to make it yourself.

Hi Darlene, I have only had my machine for a few months and have benefited greatly from reading about others experiences with their machine. I diid up a #10 can of tomato paste earlier in the week. This one was a bit challenging. For starters, there was a power outage that threw off the timer. While it was not off long enough for things for thaw out, through an additional sequence of events that are too complex to explain, I did have some water build up around the door seal. It turns out a wet silicon seal will not seal properly. This resulted in my vacuum pump sucking air for several hours until I got home and discovered the problem. So shut the machine down, dry out the seal and try to start again. However now I had a vacuum pump stall which tripped the breaker! Reset the breaker, cycle vacuum pump off and on a few times to clear out the oil and finally get rolling again! I did finally get freeze dried tomato paste though. However I was expecting something that I could easily crush into a powder. That turned out to not be the case. It reconstitutes just fine, but I ended up using all my mason jars to store them in. I may move some to mylar bags just free up some jars. All the freeze dried stuff sucks up moisture so fast, I did not want ot try to run it through my food processor. to powderize it. I currently have 3 pounds of mushrooms in the machine right now. I already did 1 pound of mushrooms a month ago and it was sure was nice to always have mushrooms ready to use. I never could use fresh ingredients before they would spoil and I am really not a fan of making frequent trips to the store.

Mike, I have to say I am blown by how much you use your machines and the things you have tried. I have learned a lot and appreciate your posts so far. I am definitely a gadget geek and have actually looked many times over the years for a freeze dryer. Everything I had seen, until earlier this year, was either too big or out of my price range. When I saw the HR freeze dryer, there was no doubt that I was going to order one. I am still in the experimentation stage, but probably the biggest thing I am trying to do is find ways to use the machine to make my life easier. Things like freeze drying ingredients such as onions, green peppers, mushrooms, etc help me because I can always be sure I have a ready supply when I want to cook something. I am not sure what direction I will take on the meat freeze drying. I do plan on doing up some precooked chicken cubes that I can throw into a dish when needed.I have a big package of frozen meatballs that do not get used very often that I may put in the machine as well. An item that has worked nicely for me is freeze dried salsa. Before I would freeze my salsa into smaller packages to take to work to use for lunch. The freeze dried salsa I find much more convenient to use. Add a little water and you can have salsa as thick or thin as I like.

I just unloaded some strawberries from the machine. The strawberries are from a bag of frozen strawberries from Sams. I remembered to measure the water extracted. For 48oz(3lbs) strawberries in, 42 ounces of water was extracted. So about 87% water content. Processing time was 27 hours. It all fit into 2 one quart jars and one pint jar. I just loaded up some tomato paste. It is a bit thicker, so I loaded almost 7 pounds from a #10 can in. I probably will have to endure a defrost cycle, but maybe not.It definitely is not 87% water. I guess at this point I am more interested in trying to create freeze dried starting ingredients rather than whole meals. Especially things I have a hard time keeping around because I would never use them fast enough. Those freeze dried pasta meals that Mike has done sure look good though.

Great info Mike. Thanks. I have found about 3 pounds of water to be the capacity of the freeze drier. I weigh everything that goes and limit it to three pounds for high moisture content foods At some point I am going to try to make a moisture content chart so I can maximize the amount I put into the machine.

I like the pictures. Have you tested all these as far as how well they rehydrate. I am particularly intereested in the how the omlettes rehydrate. I would definitely be interested in any tricks/techniques you have learned so far. I have done a few raw hamburger patties so far. One I tested right away and another I vacuum bagged and left sitting on my counter for a week. Both cooked up just fine after rehydrating. However the vacuum sealed one took a little longer to rehydrate because I think the vacuum packing compressed the burger meat which made it harder for the water to soalk in.