We Will NEVER Freeze Our EXTRA EGGS Again!

Hello everyone, welcome back to Living Traditions Homestead. Well, we've been getting so many requests for more information and more videos about the new Harvest Right

freeze

dryer we just purchased for Homestead that today we thought we'd bring you something fun, something that shows you not only how to use the

freeze

dryer

again

, but also what to do with the freeze dryer. food once you freeze-dry it well. We are quickly realizing how much freezer space we are going to free up now that we are using this freeze dryer. We're realizing that we're going to be able to have farm fresh

eggs

all winter long, even if our chickens stop laying today, we're going to do something really fun, we're going to freeze dry all the things we need to do. an omelet tomorrow morning for breakfast or brunch we are going to freeze some raw

eggs

some chopped onions and some diced green peppers everything from the farm these are our eggs these are our onions that we grew in 2020 diced and put in the freezer now let me tell you something, we grow a lot of onions but we can't store them all winter, you know, whole onions, yeah, so I dice them up and put them in freezer bags and in the freezer I have like 20 or 30 These in the freezer take up a ton of freezer space.

Well, I can take them out and freeze dry them and then I have all that freezer space left for other things or maybe we just don't have to use a freezer at all. and then we'll save that electricity right now once they're freeze dried, we won't have to store them in the freezer anymore. We can store them only in mylar bags or glass jars and then we

will

have many. More room for that

extra

pig we're raising this year in our freezer, which

will

be awesome. The same goes for green peppers. We grow all the peppers we need throughout the year during the summer and then I do the same.

I dice them and freeze them in freezer bags and they take up a lot of space so we are freeing up a lot of space in the freezer, like I said we are also going to freeze dry some raw eggs from our chickens, they will be on the shelves. stable, I have frozen my leftover eggs in the past and it works, I mean it works well, they are not fantastic but you guys freeze dried eggs are like a miracle, yes they are amazing, I can't wait to show you how easy it is. It's freeze-drying them and then reconstituting them and making them look like scrambled eggs.

It's amazing, yes, it's amazing and each of these trays will hold a dozen and a half eggs, so we've already freeze dried probably 10 or 12 dozen eggs. and we've already freeze-dried a lot of eggs because it's one of those things where you grab them while you can get them and then being able to use them all year round is amazing, which is exactly why our freeze-drying machine holds four of these trays. we have the medium size freeze dryer, yeah, so like Kevin said, 18 eggs per tray, we'll use two trays for the eggs and then one of these quart bags completely filled with chopped onions will go on one of the trays and then also the same: a bag of a quarter of green pepper cut into cubes will go in the other tray with which we are going to fill the entire freeze dryer today, now we are not going to each have an omelet with 18 eggs, well, I am.

I'm hungry, I'm going to be hungry, well I'm not going to be that hot, so let's get started and get these things going now. With the Harvest Freeze Dryer, you have two options for when you put things in it. either put the raw stuff at room temperature or you can put the prefrozen stuff, which is what we prefer to do now, the reason why it's better or we think it's better to put the prefrozen stuff is it saves quite a bit of energy in the freeze dryer, otherwise if you put things like, for example, fresh vegetables, if you just put them in, you have to freeze everything first and then you can start the freeze drying process, where if you prefreeze everything you can. put it in the freeze dryer and the freeze drying process can start much faster, so what we're going to do now is put everything in these trays and then we'll put these trays in one of our freezers. and then within a few hours, maybe within three or four hours, once everything is frozen, we'll take these trays and put them inside the freeze dryer.

The tricky thing about liquids and putting them in these trays is that it's very easy to tip them over and have all the liquids rain or half anyway, so what we're going to do today is put our dozen and a half eggs in each jar. and then we'll shuffle them here. we blend them with the blender attachment on my immersion blender and then we'll take our jars and the trays to the freezer and fill the trays in the freezer that way they won't spill everywhere between here and our freezer in the garage, well the eggs are all ready, so we're going to put them all in the freezer, freeze them well and then when we're ready to load the freeze dryer, we'll take you to it at that time.

The eggs, onions, and peppers have been in the freezer long enough now that they are frozen, so it's time to load them into the freeze dryer. I already turned on the freeze dryer about 20 minutes ago so it could cool down, it cools below freezing before we load the food in, okay, so let's open this up, take off our insulator, okay, let's load everything in, let's go Let's start with the peppers now. We'll put in our onions and then our two egg trays, now that everything is loaded, we'll put this insulator back in the front. Now, around the front, here's a big rubber gasket and when you close this door, it seals nice and tight. that rubber gasket so that it can create the vacuum inside the machine, so we simply follow the instructions on the screen.

I know you probably can't see that because it's so bright, but it says load food, close drain valve, which we already did. We press continue and that's it, the machine does the rest, so we'll leave this here. I'm guessing this will take between 18 and 24 hours based on how long it's taken in the past to do these same things and we'll see you guys come back here tomorrow morning, when you're done we can take a look at everything and then try to cook with it. Well, it's the next morning, we just finished doing chores and the freeze dryer is beeping at me.

It's finished, so let's take a look inside, make sure everything is ready, and start putting everything in a jar so we can take it home and try to make some tortillas. When the freeze dryer is completely ready, I will tell you. Right here exactly what to do in this case says open the drain, which we're going to do here, which releases the vacuum pressure from inside the machine. Once you hear it's done, we can go ahead, we'll open it up and actually look at the things inside the food to make sure it's completely dry, if not, we can reach more drying time, we'll close the vent and it will run for a few hours more, but I think this things are going to be done, we've done all these items before so I know how long they're going to take, so let's get started, let's look at the peppers, oh, they're definitely done, look how amazing they look and the onions. bring the onions to the table and put them in a jar.

I'm going to turn this off so you can hear me a little better. There we go, okay, let's put this in a jar now. I'm not going to show them to you. guys what do the eggs look like because I know sarah is really excited to show you the eggs so I'm going to make them right so we're going to put them in court jars now I don't know if you guys can figure it out but I mean They are super light and well, let me show you how they fall apart like you can grind them into onion powder, very easy because they are so light and fluffy and they smell amazing.

Now, for those of you who didn't see the first freeze drying video we did, one of the main reasons we wanted to get a freeze dryer and one of the main things we like about freeze drying versus just dehydrating, which we do a lot. to dehydrate and there is a good place to dehydrate, but one of the good things about freeze drying is that it preserves almost all the nutrition of the food, where when you can or you dehydrate you end up losing sometimes almost half of the nutritional value of the food. food when canned or dehydrated, so freeze drying is definitely the way to go.

I wish you could smell them. They smell so good now. That doesn't mean we're going to stop those other things that we will definitely continue to do. a ton of canning because honestly, in the summer when we sometimes have 50 to 100 pounds of tomatoes a day coming out of the garden, the freeze dryer is not going to keep up, so there's still a lot of things that we're going to be canning and dehydrating and there will still be some things that we just freeze, so for us freeze drying is just another form of preservation. It won't replace any of the other things we've already done.

Okay, let's get these. One thing that is hidden with freeze dried foods is that they can actually start to reabsorb moisture from the air, so if on a very humid day they can start to absorb some of that moisture from the air and start to rehydrate. That way we take out the peppers and put them in jars too. Now the reason we're going to put these in glass jars today instead of mylar bags is because these are items that we're going to use up pretty quickly and probably use up. these in the next few months so they're not something we'll be saving for long term storage, these are just for short term storage so putting them in the jars will be fine, I'm not even going to do that. put oxygen absorbers in the bottles that we are going to use first but I am going to show you what we are going to do with the bottles that we are not going to use today these two bottles that we are going to put aside because these are the ones that we are going to take home and use them to make our tortillas, but these two fuller jars that we're not going to use today right away, we're actually going to vacuum seal them, so here we have our food saver, this is one of those vacuum sealers for bags .

We've actually had this for probably 10 years or more. We actually don't use it for this anymore for vacuum steel bags, the only reason we keep it. around is for this attachment right here, this thing is cool, this is the attachment that can actually vacuum seal jars, so what you do is you put your lid on top of the jar, you put this thing over the top of the jar, we turn this on, then you take it off and you can see it's vacuum sealed and now these are going to sit here, there's no air, there's no way for them to rehydrate because we can keep this for quite a while like this so do it.

Same thing with this other jar of onions, so we'll be ready for Sarah to show you the eggs, here are the raw eggs, you guys, this is so amazing, they're completely dry, isn't it so amazing, they're completely dry? Look crunchy at that totally flaky dry 100, it's amazing, so I'm going to take them out and put them in my blender and blend them into a powder and then put them in a jar. I think eggs are one of the most interesting things to freeze dry. It's kind of a mini miracle. Anything that is one hundred percent liquid can be turned into this powder.

It's just amazing. This will be a great security for us in the winter if our hens stop laying because it is cold and because there is much less light. I'll be ready to have our farm fresh and freeze dried eggs over the winter. We're just going to mix this up because it's really going to reduce the amount. of space they take up, it will be a wonderful powder, very easy to work with, plus we are going to put them in a jar, it's that easy, just pour them carefully, look at the color, right? absolutely beautiful because of those pretty orange yolks from the free-range chickens

again

, so in this jar there are 18 eggs, a dozen and a half, we will save these to use in our omelet, but the second jar that I am going to make is going to be sealed sous vide just like the onions and peppers that Kevin made, so leave it alone, let's get all our stuff together and get in the house so we can make these tortillas.

Well, we're back in the house we have. our egg, our peppers and our onions and we're going to begin the process of reconstituting them and turning them into our breakfast. This is the fun part, the eating part. Now what I'm going to do is something a little different than what Sarah what I'm going to do we're going to try these two different ways what I'm going to do is first I'm going to put everything in a jar because what I want to know is what it would be like. this if I wanted to take It's camping or being in the woods with me or something, so basically I'm going to prepare a meal in a jar and see how it turns out.

For the eggs, two tablespoons of powder is equivalent to one egg, so I'm going to put four tablespoons that would be the equivalent of two eggs and then I'm going to put one tablespoon each of the onions and the peppers a good sized tablespoon because it What I want to know is if I had to do something like this. up, you know, I basically have this in my backpack or with my gear tohunting or whatever, can I take this with me, add some water when I'm in the woods and then have breakfast, light a fire, make a fire or whatever and have breakfast, I mean, because that's pretty awesome.

The other thing is you can make them ahead of time for your kids, uh, whatever, and just say you have a little label on there that says, add as much water, let it sit for 10 minutes. and then you know, ready to eat, just cook it and you're ready to eat, so I'm going to try mine that way, what are you going to do with yours? I'm going to make an omelette. I'm going to make a two-egg omelette. Same as Kevin. I'm going to use four tablespoons of eggs and then in a separate container, because I don't want them all mixed together in a separate container.

I'm going to put a tablespoon of peppers and a tablespoon of onions because I'm going to put the eggs in first and then I'm going to put the onions and peppers on the side like you would with an omelette so they're not all mixed together like scrambled eggs, so they'll essentially taste the same. but just a different way of cooking them. Now when it comes to reconstituting these eggs, you'll add two tablespoons of water per egg, just like the two tablespoons of egg powder, so one egg is two tablespoons of powder, two tablespoons of water. so you're going to add four tablespoons of water, which is actually a quarter cup, and what we've found is that one tablespoon of onions and one tablespoon of peppers mixed together, so two tablespoons will reconstitute very well with just one tablespoon. of water, so put that in there and I'm going to take a spoon and mix them together and basically I'm going to add the same amount of water to my jar here, except I'm just going to shake mine, so I'm going to add five tablespoons of water to my jar here, which if you really wanted to, you could even measure in a separate jar before you leave the house and then just mix the two jars together.

Five, eggs are very rare because eggs are very rare. They're actually like, you know, snotty, you know, like eggs, I don't want to be gross, but yeah, they look exactly like they were before we put them in the freeze dryer, so I've got mine here, look, look, It's like a perfect breakfast in a jar, so I'll let it sit for about 10 minutes to let the peppers and onions reconstitute before putting it in a pan. Okay, I'll let mine sit. here, absorb the water and soon we'll be ready to go, okay, it's already been, I don't know, five to ten minutes, I lost count, let's make the omelet first here, on the stove, we use cast iron, I love it. so we're just going to use a regular cast iron skillet.

I'm going to use just a little bit of our homemade lard. We just did this maybe last week. If you're interested in learning about that, be sure to watch that video. So maybe like a teaspoon to melt it. I'm going to add the egg. This is so amazing that it became. I mean, it was just rehydrated into eggs like they normally look. I'm just going to put that in the pan here. I'm going to add salt and pepper, now I'm going to flip it like a pancake and then I'm going to add my vegetables on the side, flip it.

You know, you could add cheese and a little meat. just turning the vegetables over, let them heat up nice, let's put them on the plate and try them, let's try this omelet, but I want some sriracha sauce, this is my homemade sriracha, I made a video on That you want some too of hot sauce, but I'm going to try this omelet, let's try it, okay, wait, wait, ready, set, um, it's perfect, now it's time for your scrambled eggs, yeah, these have been sitting for quite a while, so let's fry them. pan and see how they turn out with scrambled eggs, see if this is something we can take on a road trip, camping, whatever and have it ready to eat, we already have the pan heating up, give it one last shake, let's see how it works. add some salt and pepper, which honestly, you could have already added directly to the jar with the dry ingredients if you weren't going to be carrying salt and pepper with you on your camping trip.

I think this is really cool, it's giving me a lot of ideas. for similar jarred meals with the freeze dryer that I'm going to be able to make or even variations of this, I mean if you had scrambled eggs with the vegetables and then some freeze dried chicken or freeze dried ground beef in there. I mean, it's going to be perfect, okay, I think this is ready. Let's put it on a plate and try it. It's time to try the scrambled eggs. Now I don't suspect they're going to be any different to the omelette because it's the same ingredients, but again, although they are perfect, they are exactly as they would be with fresh ingredients, which is quite surprising.

We went from fresh items to freeze dried powder which is now stored in a mylar. bag or you know, with an oxygen absorber and everything, these eggs could last 25 to 30 years, so we have our egg powder, I mean, the same with these 25 to 30 years, we could be eating an omelet within 30 years from ingredients we harvest. Today's farm is quite impressive, it's quite impressive and it really gives us an additional way to preserve our harvest. We work very hard to grow and cultivate as much food as possible so that we have another way to preserve our food for a long time. short term, rather than just short term, canning, dehydrating, while two or three years sounds great, I want to be able to preserve my

extra

harvest for much longer, so this is a fantastic option, although I think that's the part harder for me.

I'm actually going to save things and say this is long term and not just eat it all now because to me this is like convenience food, it sure is, I mean this is like you're already thinking about it. I'm going to make up, you know, 10 of these in jars after this video and I'm going to leave them in the cabinet, so when I want an omelette I just add water and I make myself an omelet, so we hope you enjoyed this. I want to see more videos about the freeze dryer. Let us know that we don't want to overload you with it, but we are excited.

It's something we're really excited to have. If you want to know more about it. It has information in the description section below, make sure you press that little triangle, it will open the description section. Check it out and watch the first video we made about it. We talked about a lot of things, for example the price of the machine itself and some of the obstacles to overcoming its high price, so check out that video too if you haven't seen it, guys, if you're enjoying our videos, make sure to hit the subscribe button below and as always please share our videos, it's the best way to help us here on the farm until next time.

Thank you very much for stopping by our farm, take care and God bless you. God bless you.