Food Storage 102: Freeze Dried and Dehydrated

If you've read my other posts, Food Storage 101 and Building a Comprehensive Food Storage, then it's time to move on to Food Storage 102.

Let's talk about Freeze Dried and Dehydrated Foods.

The biggest question is always:  What's the difference?

Freeze dried foods are flash frozen before being dried, which preserves more of the foods natural vitamins and minerals.  Freeze dried foods are lighter, and can be reconstituted where some dehydrated foods cannot.  Traditional dehydration requires blanching and other prep methods before the drying process can begin which can cause a loss of some vitamins and minerals.

There is a difference in cost of course, freeze dried being higher in cost due to the difficulties of the preservation process.  Dehydration is less expensive and with the help of a quality food dehydrator, achievable at home.

So in terms of food storage, what is best?

This will depend entirely on what food you are talking about, and what your end goals are.  If you are going the "store it for SHTF and forget it" route, freeze dried foods are best, simply because under correct storage they seem to have the longest shelf life with the highest retained vitamin content. They also tend to be the lightest, which is desirable if you are "bugging out" with your goods.  Freeze dried foods are also available as MRE's (meals ready to eat), which only require rehydration to create an actual meal, a good choice if you don't think you'll have a way to cook.

For those of you in the "stocked pantry" crowd (myself included), I find that both are good to have on hand, depending on the type of food.  The following is my opinion of course:

Best foods to keep on hand in dried/dehydrated form:

• Onions.  
• Raisins
• Celery
• Herbs
• Small berries and fruits (cranberries, currants, blueberries, cherries, kiwi, bananas)
• Potatoes, sweet and Irish (several ways are best, shreds, small cubes, slices)
• Apples
• Milk
• Beans
• Pasta
• Rice

Best foods to keep on hand in a freeze dried form:

• Peppers
• Mushrooms
• Strawberries (I think these are just yummier in the freeze dried form, though some folks like them dehydrated just fine)
• Bigger berries (raspberries, blackberries)
• Eggs
• Dairy products

Foods that can go either way:

• Meats - dried jerky is great snack food, but cannot be reconstituted for meals.  Freeze dried meats can be rehydrated and turned into actual meals.
• Green beans, carrots, corn, peas - if you intend to use them as a stand alone side item, freeze dried is the best choice.  If using them in soups, stews, casseroles, etc, I like the dehydrated versions.
• Pears, peaches, apricots, pineapple - again, this depends on what you are doing with them.  All make good snacks and are fine additions to baked goods and as cereal toppings, but they simply to not store as long.

Several of these foods are best preserved in other methods, which we'll talk about later.  

How should your dried foods be stored?

There are several good methods, depending on the length of time you are storing them and how much you are storing.

For big batches of things like pastas and beans, food grade buckets with Mylar liners and oxygen absorbers are great.  Of course, those are for long term storage.  I keep smaller batches of these things in 2 1/2 gallon buckets with gamma lids to keep the bugs and moisture out.  This way I can access what's in the bucket very easily and still keep them well stored.  If you like a variety of beans like we do, we keep a quart jar vacuum sealed with each kind that we use the most (pinto, black, red, kidney).  Large or extra bags of them hang out in the 2 1/2 gallon buckets.

For freeze dried foods, most of it will come in  #10 cans or Mylar pouches.  When we open up a #10 can, whatever we aren't using immediately gets redistributed into quart jars and vacuum sealed with our food saver lid attachment.  Unopened cans store easily in the pantry.

Dehydrated foods are going to vary depending on if they are purchased or made at home.  My home dehydrated items get vacuum sealed into jars.  Some items, like onions, I buy in the #10 cans simply because drying onions at home is STINKY business.  I do the same with them as I do with freeze dried foods, redistributing and vacuum sealing in smaller jars after the can has been opened.  I do keep my hashbrown potatoes in a 2 1/2 gallon food grade bucket with gamma lid, since we use them a lot and they can be a bear to get out of a jar, even if it's a wide mouth jar.

In the next part of this series, we'll talk about canned goods. Stay tuned!