Freeze dried baked beans – because why waste things, right?
We had quite a few cans of baked beans about to go bad…
So it’s time to put them in the Ice Queen!
For this batch, I actually did three trays of these baked beans, one and a half trays of pickles (with some pickled shredded carrots too), and about a half tray of green olives. For the baked beans, two 16oz cans were put onto each tray. I spread them out as evenly as I could, and then I put them in the freezer to pre-freeze.
Pre-freezing the foods helps the freeze dryer (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium) do less work. This helps limit the regular wear on it, which is always nice:)
The beans are good:)
The baked beans turned out really well! I was a little surprised at how much like particle board they looked on the bottom, lol. But other than that, perfect!
I broke the beans into pieces kind of, then put them in mylar bags. I then added the oxygen absorbers (I use Wallaby), then I sealed them using the Harvest Right impulse sealer that came with the freeze dryer.
Freeze dried baked beans timeframe..
Considering the beans were also with the shredded carrots, sliced pickles, and green olives, total time was 23 hours. I think without the green olives, time could have been cut down by several hours.
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!!
Baked beans out of the freeze dryer.
Freeze dried baked beans! The bottom looks kinda like particle board, lol. I saved some out of the mylar bags to reconstitute, too.. that’s coming in a few minutes😀🥳 pic.twitter.com/sezjbDqWfV
— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) January 26, 2024
Reconstituting freeze dried baked beans.
Freeze dried baked beans reconstituted.. sorry it’s kinda long, I sped up some of it. I added a bit too much water at the very end, which is annoying. But they tasted good, texture was right, etc. Woohoo!!! 🥳🫘😂 pic.twitter.com/jIu3LyXJHH
— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) January 26, 2024