COOKING WITH FREEZE DRIED FOODS

If you have ever bought some freeze dried fruits or vegetables thinking they would be great in an emergency, but now find yourself wondering how to use them, this post is for you. Cooking with freeze dried foods is super simple and easy and requires far less water than you might think.  In fact there are some uses where you don't have to rehydrate at all. There is a little bit of a learning curve but hopefully this post will lessen the curve for most of you. Another great thing is that you can freeze dry pretty much everything so there is a huge variety of foods or pre-made meals that are available.  

   DRY USES- The best part of freeze-dried foods is that you can just eat them as they are (yes, even meat!).  Just pop them in your mouth and let them melt.  I really enjoy doing this with yogurt bites (greek yogurt ones are the best) and any type of fruit. Freeze dried meats and all meals are cooked before they are freeze dried so you don't have to worry about getting sick from eating them without "cooking" them.  Of course if you do choose to eat a lot of dry freeze dried foods make sure you drink water after as your body will need the water to aid in digestion and the foods will kind of dry your mouth out. 

     One great way to use fruits, veggies or herbs dry is to add them to a mix.  If you like to make muffins, quick breads, bread/rolls you can pre-mix all the dry ingredients together including the fruit or veggies in with the dry ingredients and put it in a mylar bag, drop in an oxygen absorber and seal it. You can do the same with soup mixes and even add them into smoothies to up the flavor and nutritional value. Here is a link with some "instant" soup recipes that can easily be upsized to feed more than one person and put in mylar bags for your family's food storage or kept individual and put in your emergency bags. For long term storage (even in backpacks) make sure you use mylar bags and oxygen absorbers. 

   Another more unconventional use for them is to make it into a powder and really up the flavor profile of whatever you are making. For example if you have ever made, say, a strawberry flavored cake or frosting and wished it tasted more like strawberries without using a fake tasting extract,  just add freeze dried strawberry powder to your cake or frosting and you will have a really good flavor of strawberry. 

     With your dry veggies and meat, saute them in a little bit of oil just like you would before adding the other ingredients. Doing it this way as opposed to rehydrating before hand will help add a better flavor profile to your dishes. This will significantly reduce the time you have to saute too, you only need to do this for about 30 seconds or so before you will need to add the proper amount of water or your egg mixture for omelettes.  Any longer and you run the risk of burning and ruining the flavor of your whole dish. 

   One quick share. A few weeks ago my son and I were making brownies and I realized I didn't have enough eggs.  Gasp!! What were we going to do? Luckily I remembered that a few years ago I had freeze dried a bunch of raw eggs.  I just scrambled them up, freeze dried them, and then put them in a blender to make a powder.  So I used my freeze dried eggs in the brownies.  Just threw the powder in and then added a couple of Tbsp. of water to the batter.  They turned out great and no one but my son was any the wiser.   

    REHYDRATING-The most important thing you need to know about rehydrating freeze dried foods is that you really need less water than you might think. If your foods are completely floating in the water you have most definitely added too much water. The food really only needs to sit in a small amount of water so that it starts to "pool" at the bottom.  Then leave it to absorb the water, you will want to stir it occasionally so that it all rehydrates the same and you don't have any random dry parts left. If you over hydrate your freeze dried foods you will have two problems: 1. they will be soggy and not taste like a good fresh version of whatever it was, 2. when you drain the excess water off you will also be draining off important vitamins and nutrients in that water.  This is a good video to watch to know how to rehydrate your foods, he is doing cheese and he is talking about a specific freeze dry brand but overall it is a good video to watch. Here is another video to watch too.

   Times you will want to rehydrate before using the foods is when you know they will be used in dishes where there won't be a lot of water, for example: in casseroles, enchilada filling, cream based soups, etc. If they will be used in recipes that have a lot of water such as spaghetti sauce, enchilada sauce, broth based soups, etc. there is no need to rehydrate first. I found this helpful conversion chart, it covers more than just freeze dried foods it also has substitutions for a variety of things(like if a recipe calls for alcohol there are good suggestions for alternatives that aren't alcoholic).