Freeze dried strawberries? Yes, please:)
So excited – and I can’t wait to turn the tops into freeze dried strawberry powder, too!
Strawberries are good just as they are, so I can’t wait to try them freeze dried! Aside from just making freeze dried strawberries, I also plan to make freeze dried strawberry powder out of the tops.
I’ve made powders before.. apple scraps made absolutely amazing freeze dried apple powder, and I’ve also made some wonderful citrus powder as well! So I have full faith in the process and I’m sure the freeze dried strawberry powder is also going to be incredible!
For this batch, I used four pounds of strawberries. That gave me 3 and 2/3 trays of sliced strawberries and 1 and 1/3 tray of strawberry tops. After the Ice Queen (Harvest Right Home Pro Medium) did her 15 minute cooldown to start, I put the strawberries and tops in.
I’m really excited about this batch! The freeze dried powders are just so so awesome! And if we love these like I think we all will, I plan to buy a ton come summer so I can freeze dry a bunch to have over winter next year:)
These are so so good!
Freeze dried strawberries are freaking amazing! So flavorful, so delicious, totally awesome!
I put some of the strawberries into jars and some into bags with oxygen absorbers and then vacuum sealed them. 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.
Powder from the strawberry tops came out great, more on that below:)
How long did the freeze dried strawberries take?
Truth is, I don’t know. I made some mistakes with the strawberries and had to run them twice.
When the freeze dryer initially stopped, at about 15.5 hours, I messed up. I took things out to check if they were done, then without thinking clicked right on through to the defrost phase and started it. Well, things weren’t done, lol. There’s no way to “go back” a step or anything. And though you can skip ahead to get back to the drying phase, it can possibly break things. At first I started skipping steps to do that, then decided I’d better not break anything, so I just did the whole process again. So my total ended up being 37.5 hours to run it through twice, lol.
Did the two hour defrost after this batch, it needed it after all that, ha!
Freeze dried strawberry powder is rad!
Seriously, I am super super thrilled with this! It could not have com out any better!
To powder it, I just put it in my Nutri Ninja (I actually have this, the Ninja Blender with Nutri Ninja Cups) and it blended up splendidly! Put it in a jar, didn’t bother adding oxygen absorbers, as I plan to use it soon:)
I am really loving how many different things I can turn into powders to use! So much fun!! 🙂
Happy freeze drying!!
Freeze dried strawberries are finally finished😂 they came out great, and so did the powder I made from strawberry tops!🥳 pic.twitter.com/zzstv4nGTI
— Buck Hills Farm (@buck_hills_farm) February 14, 2024
