The family loves chili, so it’s going to be awesome to have more!
Freeze dried chili – woohoo!
I’m really excited about this! I did make some freeze dried chili before (check it out here). But when I did it before, it wasn’t much because everyone ate it all before I had a chance to pre-freeze it, lol. This time, I made a HUGE batch – I used 6 pounds of beef, several cups of peppers and red onions, lots of tomatoes, lots of flavors, etc. It was a seriously big batch of chili!!
So this time, I did manage to fill all five trays with my chili – I could not be more excited! I started the Ice Queen (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium), and after the 15 minute cool down it does, in went the chili:)
People online have told me that they put freeze dried chili in pint jars, then they can just add hot water, let it sit for a few minutes, and it’s like a single serve meal! That is 100% what I plan to do with all this chili!
This stuff is just so so good!
I knew the freeze dried chili would turn out well because I’ve done a little bit of it before. But I’m still always blown away by just how good things are! So I did five full trays of the chili with beans – I know some people don’t like beans in chili, but I do, lol. After it was finished, I ended up with 7 pint jars and 1 half gallon jar full. I’m considering the pints to be pretty close to single serve, and the half gallon is family size:) Super excited to have this dinner option on the shelf now!
As usual, I put the food into jars with oxygen absorbers and then vacuum sealed them. I used three oxygen absorbers for the half gallon jar, simply because it’s bigger, more air, etc. I get my oxygen absorbers on Amazon from Wallaby, great value for the price! And this is the Electric Mason Jar Vacuum Sealer I have. The vacuum sealers easily fit in a drawer (I have two lol), which is important for me.
How long did the freeze dried chili take?
It took a solid 20 hours. Granted, it could have been done before the 20 hours was over, but I didn’t let it just decide this time. I’ve had trouble with the Ice Queen going off and beeping at me at like 3am, and that’s super annoying. So per the advice of many awesome folks on X (formerly Twitter), I set the Extra Dry Time to 10 hours. That way, I was able to take it out when I had time. And extra time spent drying isn’t going to hurt anything. Makes perfect sense, and I’m so so glad I listened to the advice of others!
Did the two hour defrost after this batch, it needed it after all that, ha!
Happy freeze drying!!
Crushing a bean from the FD chili, lol.
Since the texture of freeze dried stuff like this is mostly all the same, thought instead of filming the chili being crumbly as expected, I’d crush a bean instead😂
Freeze dried chili is done! Stand by for video reconstituting some of it that didn’t fit in the jars🥳 pic.twitter.com/Bjfs5WWArY— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) February 8, 2024
Chili reconstituted.
Reconstituting the freeze dried chili – so so good!!😀 pic.twitter.com/9QmbCHPxuq
— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) February 8, 2024
