Freeze-Drying Success Story
By Julie Woodbury,
MCGC President
The October meeting of the Mountrail County Garden Club featured a presentation on Freeze Drying by Kathy Ruland. Kathy shared her strategy for why she utilizes a freeze dryer, some tips on how she uses the machine and the resulting products, and a wide array of foods prepared by freeze drying, many with few or no other ingredients added.
Kathy started freeze drying a couple years ago. Her goal is to utilize the freeze dryer to minimize the number of additives in food. She also stated that she doesn’t enjoy cooking, but loves using her freeze dryer. One of her favorite foods to use is squash, particularly zucchini and spaghetti squash. She uses the zucchini as a flour substitute and uses it for breading chicken, to make biscuits, and much more.
Harvest Right freeze dryers are readily available, and that is the brand Kathy has. She says the freeze dryer is easy to set up, and comes with instructions and recipe books, a variety of mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, and other supplies. Once dried and properly stored, freeze dried foods are lightweight, portable and can maintain their quality for decades. Foods can be dried singly, or as a ready-to-eat full meal, such as soups and stews.
Kathy provided a wide array of foods for club members to sample, including apples, pickled beets, tomatoes, raspberries, carrots, bananas, blackberries, corn, peaches, strawberries, and pickles. She used peppers, onions, zucchini, spaghetti squash, lemons, potatoes, and many other ingredients, and prepared a supper for the club. Chicken was breaded with zucchini and air-fried. Freeze-dried potatoes were turned into mashed potatoes. Kathy used 1/3 zucchini flour and 2/3 wheat flour to make biscuits. Tomatoes and several other freeze-dried ingredients were added to cooked turkey burger and made a delicious soup. Lemons added to water made a refreshing drink. Banana pudding cups were freeze-dried, and strawberries, lemons, apples and squash were used to make zucchini-lemon mini pies, strawberry cheesecake and apple-pie desserts. All together, it created a varied and delicious meal.
The Club thanks Kathy for her time teaching us about freeze-drying and serving us such a unique supper. The Mountrail County Garden Club meets the 2nd Tuesday of most months. Our next meeting will be December 9th, with Janine Paulson presenting about the invasive Creeping Bellflower weed that has taken hold in the Stanley area. We welcome new members to our club. Just come to the next meeting and check it out.