Freeze dried apple powder

Why turn the apple scraps into powder?

For me, this is twofold.. when combined with some sugar and added to water, it can make a great homemade apple juice – think Kool-Aid powder, lol. I also very much like an apple flavor on various meats. So I plan to add the freeze dried apple powder to a meat rub I already make myself. I think it’ll give a nice flavor:)

For this batch, which is my 20th if all the candies count as separate ones, I had two trays of apple scraps, two trays of sliced apples, and one tray of sliced apples I also sprinkled cinnamon on. I’m not sure if maybe I should have done the cinnamon before pre-freezing, but by the time I decided to add it, it was too late, ha. Everything was pre-frozen, laid out on trays, then into the Ice Queen freeze dryer (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium) they went:)

Hopefully the scraps powder easily.. I’m very excited to see how it turns out!

Everything turned out great!

The apples turned out as expected (post more on apple slices here) and the ones I sprinkled with cinnamon were more flavorful than expected! I wasn’t sure how good they would be since I did the cinnamon after freezing, instead of before.

The apple powder turned out phenomenal! Thanks to the Nutri Ninja attachment for my blender (I have this Nutri Ninja Blender, but looks like you can get just the little cups, which is what I used for this), the powder came out super fine! I just put it in a jar, since I plan to use it here and there. With a little added sugar, it really does become like Kool-Aid!

For the apple slices, I put them in jars like I did with the last batch I made. I then added the oxygen absorbers (I use Wallaby), then I sealed them using our handheld rechargeable jar vacuum sealers.

So how long did the mixed vegetables take?

Total time for freeze dried apple slices and scraps came out to 13 hours and 15 minutes.

I did need to defrost the freeze dryer after, so I just let it do the auto-set 2 hours and that was perfect.

Happy freeze drying!!