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Does anyone here have a harvest right freeze dryer? I just bought a medium pro model yesterday. My 10 year old daughter wants to start a little business for herself freeze drying and selling candy like skittles and jolly ranchers etc.

I figure we can also use it to freeze dry herbs from my 11 year olds herb garden and vegetables from our garden. I also planted 11 fruit trees 4-5 years ago that are starting to produce. Our cherry trees were loaded last year and those should freeze dry well.

I just set it all up and tomorrow we'll run a break in batch and then start doing some candy this week.

Those of you that have freeze dryers is there any advice you have for using one? Any favorite foods you do? Any favorite candies that my daughter can do and sell?

Thanks,
Bb

I think Rock Chuck has one

Wife bought a medium last year to “preserve all our garden and hunting stuff”.

It’s seen a steady diet of candy.

Skittles are the big hit. I haven’t perfected it, just did a one time trial on not actually freeze drying them. Google it up. But you can pre-warm skittles in a 200? Degree oven to get them soft. Then put them under vacuum only in the freeze dryer for a few minutes to make them pop open. Results are about the same as a full day freeze dry cycle and a lot less energy use. Wife got mad and said they weren’t the same. I bet with tweaking I could perfect it. But I’ll keep my mouth shut. I almost bet many that are sold as freeze dried are simply heated and a vacuum pulled on them. There can’t be much moisture in them from the factory…

Strawberries & Bananas are good, kind of like candy.

Also, when cycle is done, do your packaging immediately. Wife didn’t understand you can’t just nonchalantly leave them sitting on the counter in humid Missouri and package at your convenience. Moisture wants to equalize from air back into the product.

Ok I gotta know

What does a freezer drier do to Skittles?

Ok headed to the search engine

I got a medium size one just before Thanksgiving.

The tray rack is kinda tight and we had some food explosions with doing sugary juices and Ice Cream.

Watch some You Tube Video and learn from them.
Candy can be tricky mess if not doe right.

Ice cream bars and orange sherbet bars sell good. Strawberries are legitimately good.

What it does or what all the moms and kids think it does?

What I see is it makes them expand to double and turn very crunchy. I think warming and pulling a vacuum does exact same thing and in minutes instead of hours.

I used the big rectangular box on my browser and searched it up. 👏🏻🙏🏼


From the innanet gods


There’s no real reason to preserve Skittles for long-term storage, but freeze drying them makes them crunchy instead of chewy. The flavor is even more intense, and you don’t have that stick-to-your-teeth sensation. To freeze dry Skittles, just place them in a single layer on a Harvest Right freeze dryer tray and process in your home freeze dryer. The inside filling will expand, cracking the candy shell and doubling the size of the candy. Sometimes they come out in really odd shapes, which just ups the fun factor.

Freeze-dried Skittles have a powerful tangy flavor that pairs nicely with salted peanuts. Freeze-dried mini marshmallows have a creamy flavor that cuts through the citrus of the Skittles, so a half-and-half combination is extra tasty.

We’ve had ours for three years. Make sure your change your pump oil and order the replacement metal oil rebreather cap from harvest right.

I seen a big sale @ tractor supply and wondered wth you’d use one for

I had some jolly ranchers someone had done and they were really good. They puffed up about the size of a golf ball. They had a light puffy texture and an intense candy flavor.

I'm excited to do strawberries so I can quit getting in trouble for picking them out of the special k red berries cereal.

Bb

I have the medium size. We've done quite a few things with it. You learn as you go. Some things are great, others are terrible. Carrots are terrible. I think broccoli is terrible, my wife loves it.
I tried some salt water taffy for a friend. They have a lot of air in them and they swell as the dryer creates a vacuum. They will swell a LOT. I tried doing ice cream. I bought a couple cartons and sliced them. The chocolate came out pretty good. The caramel swelled like the taffy and made a big mess. I haven't tried any other candy.

I made a big batch of elk stew. 1 tray will hold 2 servings. It's handy to have along on camping trips and for emergency food storage.

Walmart carries a number of brands of ice cream sandwiches. Don't get the cheap ones. If you're going to eat junk food, at least eat better quality junk food. The Fat Boy sandwiches will swell larger than the dryer can handle. A mess is guaranteed.

Juicy fruit like peaches or nectarines are great but they dry down to close to nothing and they'll take 3 days to dry. Grapes are quite good but you have to cut each one. The skins won't let the water escape. I prefer regular dried apples over freeze dried. They just taste better.

1 tray of the medium size will hold 1 dozen whipped eggs. They're handy for cooking and camping.

Don't put it in a warm room. If it gets too warm, the dryer will have a hard time keeping the temperature low enough. I have mine next to a window. Even with the window open and a fan going, I had it shut down once this summer. A garage can get too hot in the summer.

Like Rock Chuck said

It is an experiment on your personal tastes
Love the Strawberry's , Pineapple and Bananas.
Oranges for us was a big Frailer. Orange Juice did not work very well
Pineapple Juice took to long and was an Explosion mess but is good.

Love the green apples red apples are OK.
They are like popping Styrofoam chunks in your mouth then the explosion of apple taste hits you.
Love the Apples so does my girl and our dogs they also love Bananas.
Our dogs have learned that good things come out of that machine and they are around it when we load and unload the thing.

I am thinking about getting liver to freeze dry for dog treats

Precooked Chicken and Ham turned out real well for soups.

Have not tried candy yet but some fruit are great and I can not wait to try more stuff.

It is lie what can we try next.

Skittles expand and become crunchy. I think strawberries and peaches are the best fruit, blackberries yuk. Take your tomatoes, slice and season. They make an excellent snack, come out like a potato chip crunch wise, but taste like a tomato. You can make whatever meal you want for hunting. You can't do chocolate or fatty/oily foods. A thought on sealing things up, after you seal weigh the package and write the weight on it. Later before you open it you can re-way if its more than the listed weight its probable bad due to a bad seal and won't be good.

More like eating spong chips

Apples cinnamon and sugar make apple snaps. Pretty good. Next level is using maltodextrin with Guiness stout to make powdered backcountry billy beer. Pumpkin and Apple pie is also decent. We freeze dry a lot of things and are pretty well set for what may come.

I got the same freeze dryer a few years ago with the intention of freezer drying our surplus chicken eggs in the summer and for vegetables from the garden. I used it a few times for eggs and garden veggies before we moved and don’t have a vegetable garden anymore and all but two chickens have been killed by various predators. Now my kids keep it going with skittles and ice cream sandwiches cut into quarters. Strawberries and chunks of pineapple are pretty good too. I’ve also done a few trays of chili in it and then sealed it into serving size containers and they can be reheated with a little hot water.
As far as selling stuff my friends kids started a meal worm farm going in there backyard. Once it got going it was growing way more than they could sell live, so the kids started dehydrating them and selling them at the farmers market as boutique pet and chicken feed and I forget what they were selling them for but it was about five times what I thought it would be and he said they sold out every weekend.

About tomatoes...dry a bunch then run them through a blender to turn them to powder. Store it in glass jars and toss in a desiccant pad to keep it dry. Tomatoes will start to absorb water immediately after coming out of the dryer. Use the powder on anything. A little scattered over a salad, baked potato, etc. gives it a good tomato taste. It's your own garden grown tomatoes without the water.

Here's one source for food safe desiccant packs. They can be heated and reused. DESICCANT