Freeze Drying Sweet Potatoes | Harvest Right™ | Home Freeze Dryers | Freeze Dried Food Storage (2024)

FAQs

How to prepare sweet potatoes for freeze drying? ›

Freeze drying sweet potatoes is so easy. Just slice them about 1″ thick and place them in a single layer on the freeze drying trays. Store them in airtight containers until you're ready for them. One of the best ways to use freeze dried sweet potatoes is to make them into mashed sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon.

While deciding where to store sweet potatoes keep in mind whether they're raw or cooked. Storing raw sweet potatoes in the freezer will actually make them spoil faster, however it's best to keep baked sweet potatoes or cooked yams in the freezer.

It typically takes between 20 to 40 hours to complete the process. Food type and quantity will affect the freeze-dry cycle. Things like meat, peas and corn dry quickly, while squash and watermelon can take longer. The thickness of the food slices will affect the cycle time too.

The chamber and shelf components, usually stainless steel, must distribute heat uniformly and tolerate vacuum stress without deforming. So, the cost is high due to precise engineering. A second reason why are freeze dryers so expensive is their limited volume and high-complexity manufacturing process.

Sweet potatoes should be pretreated before being dehydrated, otherwise, they will retain a raw “uncooked” taste when rehydrated. The most common way to pretreat vegetables is to blanch them for a few minutes, using either steam or boiling water.

If you freeze them without cooking them first, they're likely to get freezer burn and develop an unpleasant texture. 2. Try blanching your potatoes to save prep time. If you need to quickly prepare sweet potatoes for the freezer, try blanching them.

A freeze dryer used in a small or medium household consumes approximately 990 to 1500 watts per hour. Depending on the local electricity costs of the region in which it is used, the cost of the freeze-drying process varies. A medium sized freeze dryer uses approximately 30 kilowatts of electricity per load.

The freeze dryer should be set up in an area that has good ventilation and isn't too hot or too cold. The ideal operating room temperatures for the freeze dryer are between 50 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. A little hotter and colder is not a big deal, those are just the ideal temperatures.

Every Harvest Right Freeze Dryer has been designed, engineered, and tested in our manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Freeze dryers work by freezing food, then reducing pressure and adding heat. Increasing the temperature heats the frozen water in the food, changing the water into vapor. A dehydrator air dries food at low temperatures. This lower heat level means that the food does not cook in the machine.

How do you prepare potatoes for freezing drying? ›

They can also lose their flavor or texture. You can avoid these issues if you blanch or cook your potatoes in hot water before freeze-drying. You don't need to cook the potatoes fully; you can just blanch them for a few minutes depending on the size of the potato pieces. You can also freeze-dry baked potatoes.

After baking and cooling the sweet potatoes, remove the skins and slice crosswise thinly, between ⅛ and ¼ inch thick (½ cm). Place sweet potato chips in a single layer on dehydrator trays. Dehydrate @ 135°F (57°C) for approximately ten hours.

Raw sweet potatoes should not be refrigerated. Store in a cool, dry, dark place, unwrapped, for up to two months or at room temperature for up to a week. Cooked sweet potatoes can be stored in the refrigerator, frozen, dried or canned.

It is not recommended to dry pack sweet potatoes.