Contributed By: Adventures in Freeze Drying: For Beginners
About 5lbs of Apples yielded 4 medium trays, triple stacked with parchment between layers*
Directions
- Clean your apples and then you can leave skin, or peel (An apple corer works great for this.
- Core, and thinly slice apples (Apple corer/slicer works great for this) trying to keep apples the same thickness.
- If you want to dip your apples in a lemon juice bath to keep from browning do this as you slice the apples.
- Put parchment down on your tray, layer apples, sprinkle with cinnamon if you desire.
- I did 3 single layer layers on my trays, putting parchment between each layer.
- Pre-Freeze or add directly to machine and Freeze Dry
- Store Appropriately (See Tips and Tricks for storage help)
Cycle Time
My cycle time in a medium freeze dryer with a premier pump was 24 hours.
Rehydration
Not intended
* Large Tray = 8 Cups/tray Medium = 6 Cups/Tray Small = 4 Cups/Tray
Comments (2)
I have found a really great method to keep apples from browning rather than using lemon juice. I’ve freeze-dried several loads of apple slices using this method and they never brown, soak apples in salt water! Dissolve one teaspoon kosher salt in 2 cups water. Soak 10 minutes….rinse or don’t rinse….doesn’t matter….however, I usually rinse as I don’t want extra salt in my diet. I’ve also used this on pears.
Sounds good! Did you pre-freeze yours? I have not yet tried unfrozen food.
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Freeze Drying Cookbook replied:
Hi Kathleen,
This was a lesson learned the hardway! I prefroze mine, but used wax paper between my layers. BIG mistake. Make sure if you prefreeze, you use parchment between layers, and I always layer mine in 3 layers when I freeze dry them. I have also started putting parchment on the top layer to keep my cinnamon from being sucked into the pump!
Happy Freeze Drying! Brenda
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