Hasn’t this been done already? Yes, lol.
I use bell peppers and onions a ton!
I have freeze dried bell peppers and onions before – you can read the writeup right here. There is a difference though. I did pre-freeze everything the first time. This time, I did not. Let’s see the time difference, at the end, shall we?
This batch included two trays of bell peppers (red, yellow, orange, and green), two trays of red onion, and one tray of sweet onion. Like I mentioned before, I did NOT pre-freeze these. So onto the trays and into the Ice Queen freeze dryer they went (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium).
I am very curious to see time difference with pre-freezing versus not.
Of course these are awesome, but we already knew that 🙂
So these are great. I know I’ve done them before, and I will definitely continue to make more freeze dried bell peppers and onions. I use both of them and a combination of them in so so many things, I will always use them up!
As usual, I put everything into jars with oxygen absorbers and then vacuum sealed them. This is the Electric Mason Jar Vacuum Sealer I have, and I love it!! I actually have two of them to help make sealing jars go faster, lol.
So how long did this batch of freeze dried bell peppers and onions take?
A lot longer than when I pre-froze everything, I can tell you that! When I did pre-freezing, it took 17 hours and 30 minutes. Without pre-freezing, this batch took 26 hour and 15 minutes. Without freezing the trays first, it took an additional 8 hours and 45 minutes!!! That’s insane! So 100% will always pre-freeze from here on out!
Defrost was required after this batch, so I did the automatic 2 hours for that. Then I did have to empty the bucket I have the drain line going into, so that was taken care of as well. I still very very much love this machine!!!
Happy freeze drying!!
Video of the freeze dried bell peppers and onions. I did not pre-freeze this batch and wowzers!! It took 8 hours and 45 minutes longer than the first batch of peppers and onions that I did pre-freeze! That’s a lot of extra wear on the machine. But I wanted to know, and now I do😂 pic.twitter.com/gEJrQpzQRc
— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) February 3, 2024
