Freeze dried chili mac

We love chili and we love macaroni.. chili mac was an absolute must to have in our freeze dried storage!

For this, I made a huge batch of my Totally Rad Chili, then turned it into my delicious Chili Mac! Honestly, both recipes are freaking amazing! Both hubby and our teenager 10000% approve of these recipes 🙂

After making the chili mac, feeding the boys, and setting some aside for the next evening, I put the rest on freeze dryer trays. I got all five trays filled, which is so awesome!! I really wanted this batch to be all chili mac, not having to fill up empty trays with frozen veggies or something. I totally hit that goal!

This batch was pre-frozen. It sat in the freezer for maybe 20(ish) hours. When I was ready to start the batch, I started the Ice Queen (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium) and waited the 15 minutes for her to cool down. After she finished her cooldown period, I asked hubby to get the trays out of the freezer. The trays, all full and in one big, kinda stuck together pile, are pretty heavy, lol.

Anyway, in they went, and now we wait!

This is fantastic, as expected, haha!

I figured this would probably be good, and in my opinion, I was right. We have freeze dried chili before (read about that HERE), but this is our first time doing something with noodles in it.

I did set some aside to reconstitute, video below.

For the rest, I put some in mason jars to eat at home, and some in mylar bags for the boys to take camping or fishing or whatever. For both the jars and the bags, I put an oxygen absorber in prior to sealing (I use Wallaby brand from Amazon). I then shut the bags, the ones I use have a zipper like a Ziplock bag, and then heat sealed them to make sure they stay shut. For the jars, I vacuum sealed them – I have two Electric Mason Jar Vacuum Sealers – they’re not expensive, and they work really well.

So… how long did the freeze dried chili mac take in the Ice Queen?

This took 32 hours, 25 minutes, and 28 seconds. I did pull it out and flip it over and break some apart around the 27 hour mark. Good idea to do that with things like this, as it could have some wet spots that you don’t see on the bottom.

The ice was super built up in the freeze dryer after this batch was finished, so a defrost was definitely needed! I did the usual two hour defrost, then just left the drain hose open and let it finish up naturally overnight.

Happy freeze drying!!

Freeze dried chili mac came out awesome!! I plan to reconstitute some later this week or weekend, whenever I have time, things are mad busy lol. Anyway, it’s now a fam favorite, so I’ll probably be making huge batches of this every month or two to get our stock up😀 pic.twitter.com/rIVeto4KYi

— Buck Hills Farm (@BuckHillsFarm) April 24, 2024