Sunday, August 28, 2011

Freeze drying food

I have an industrial vacuum pump.... Doing some research. Might try to make my own freeze dried foods for storage. Any thoughts?

13 comments:

Why Not? said...

I remember getting the freeze dried ice cream from the museum when I was as kid... that as fun..

SER said...

Toss it in the trash...

Toad said...

Are you talking about an Industrial type of vacuum machine like they make for your kitchen? How does It remove the air? What kind of material does It suck the air out of?

Huck Finn said...

No, I'm talking about an industrial vacuum pump that pulls serious vacuum for industrial applications. If you hook this thing up to a 55 gallon drum and seal it, the drum will crumple into a wad. I know about vacuum packing. I'm not talking about using a piddly little counter top food saver.

I'm thinking that this winter with a good cold snap and a paint pressure pot (again, an industrial unit), I could dehydrate using vacuum long term food stores using sublimation.

1. Pre-freeze food.
2. place in paint pot located outside in the cold.
3. Pull a hard vacuum and hold it.
4. After dehydration, store using a normal counter top food vac storage procedure.

Give me some credit here, If you saw my garage machine shop, you'd know I understand what "Industrial" means. Doing some research, there appears to be no reason why it shouldn't work. Then again, I could be missing something about the process.

They state that they apply heat, but then say the temps never get above freezing. Maybe I need to get the food as cold as dry ice first. That's the next step of my research. Freeze dried Maple syrup anyone?

Timt49 said...

don't go takin this the wrong way huck, but there are always other uses for that vacuum pump:)

Anonymous said...

In home fusion experiments!

kkdither said...

From someone who has been hospitalized 2 weeks with severe food poisoning... playing with staving off bacteria in food for consumption is not worth the risk.

OrbsCorbs said...

Go for it, Huck! Hell, you designed that lift for yourself. You can do anything. Anonymous is right. I'm surprised you haven't done home fusion yet. That could take you off the power grid completely.

Anonymous said...

Oh it works real good and you don't need a vaccuum (I never could remember if vacuum had 2 "c"'s and 1 "u" or 1 "c" and 2 "u"'s). Anyhow I found this bag of frozen peas on the bottom of our freezer (and yes I took more than 1) and they were frozen alright, and they were REAL dry....the expiration date was something 2010 (couldn't read it that well, the ink wore off the rest).

Toad said...

Huck, I guess I don't understand freeze drying at all. I was thinking freeze dried coffee. How do they remove the water from the brewed coffee? Dehydrating makes sense, but NOT freeze drying vegetables etc. YOU got me. BTW. I KNOW your an engineer. In NO way was I or AM I trying to belittle you.

Timt49 said...

heck huck, build some heavy duty industrial quality penis pumps. me and orbs will be ur first 2 customers....

Huck Finn said...

Toad... They don't work. Trust me on this. I've been fighting this nerve crap a long time, like way before viagra. The absolute worst was an injection you're supposed to give yourself... Comes a point where you end up saying sorry hon, we ain't having sex no more.

Toad said...

Huck, I think the Penis Pump idea reply was intended for TMT49, not me.