Preserve Fresh Food For 25 Years without Chemicals? Simple, easy and fun!

this thing is awesome for little snacks like marshmallows strawberries and take apples puree them up and make a little apple snack you can make super healthy snacks to keep you from eating that processed junk hey there folks this is Josh Stony Ridge farmer welcome back to another fun and awesome food Friday here on the Stony Ridge Farm we're going to be using the prep for Life freeze dryer today and I don't know about you guys but it's Garden season we're in full swing and I'm picking this mini squash every single day I cannot eat this mini squash but I hand freeze dry them for later use and we're going to show you guys how it's all done that preserves the shape preserves the flavor preserves everything you can't freeze squash and it come out worth of crap but you can freeze dry squash rehydrated and it's almost just as good as it was the day it came out of the garden let's have some fun here with the prep for Life freeze dryer buddy come here boy come here that's a good boy come here what you doing buddy you going to help me good boy good boy all right guys let's start with a problem that we have this is not a problem this is absolutely gorgeous these are my raay bed gardens that you saw in a past video there'll be a link right up here if you want to watch that and a link at the end of this video what I'm getting here is a bumper crop of squash this kind of stuff right here this guy probably could stay on for one more day I do like them when they're sweet young and tender like that if we go in here we still see more squash couple more sweet young and Tinder right here so these guys are doing great there's a squash plant in here there's zucchini right in here okay when you got squash like this guys you got to pick it every single day if you don't it's going to get out of hand there's two or three squash plants there two or three more there and let's just walk over here and check these out we're in the outdoor kitchen space right here just so you guys know this is from Carolina Barn builders and this is more squash more yellow squash I see one in there right now oh baby you're going in the free dryer that's so perfect just that Palm siiz squash that is the best ever so let's show you the freeze dryer this is what we're going to be using today it's called prep for life you're going to see some lights and stuff in the background this is the prep for Life freeze dryer right here is our screen can't see a whole lot in it but super simple all we do is slide our trays which are right here into the freeze dryer hit the go button and we go that's it it freeze dries super simple it couldn't be any more simple than that this thing is awesome for little snacks like marshmallows strawberries I also have some little trays so we can make little squash bites you can make apple bites you can take apples puree them up and make a little apple snack you can make all sorts of stuff my dad has some fig trees and we got about a five gallon bucket of figs off of them last year I made fig snacks and snacked on them all winter long guys so you can make super healthy snacks to keep you from eating that process junk all that's going to be in this is squash and that's it one ingredient so we got our cutting board we've got our squash we picked all the squash for the day we've got a yucky bucket this is our yucky bucket that will go to the chickens and all we're going to do is simply take our squash and we're going to be cutting it into specific sizes specific say that about 15 times we're going to cut the ends off we got our hands all washed from petting the dog by the way just so you know not really into dog dander in my food and we're going to be putting them on these prep for Life racks let's show you the racks real quick before we get into cutting the squash we've got to get everything prepared these are the trays that come with the prep for Life setup here's how they work there's a tray and you can order these optional pads to put in here to keep things from sticking and it helps you to pour them in the bag so you pick it up and tip it up and pour it in the bag so we layer one of these on here and then we can layer a rack on here so we can double decker this stuff double stack just like that right there when you're doing apples and thin cut stuff like this this is the bee's knees this is the trick we'll set this guy over here we'll go ahead and get all of them prepared and ready to rock and roll by the way guys prep for life is out of Salt Lake City area in Utah they've actually been out here to the farm which is super cool this isn't a sponsored video for prep for life this is just what I'm doing to prep for my life but I do recommend that you check it out I also have a Harvest Right freeze dryer and we'll check that out in a future video together also the prep for life is a little bit lower maintenance longevity wise time will tell which one lasts the longest all right we're going to slice these about 1 in thick 3/4 in to 1 Ines thick awesome stuff what tastes good in your frying pan is what's going to taste good out of the freeze dryer the cool thing about the freeze dryer is that it freezes it in the shape that it is in other words whatever size it is when you put it in here is what size it's going to be when it comes out unless unless it's marshmallows or peeps I did some peeps what we're going to do is pretty much concentrate on all yellow squash or all zucchini squash on whichever rack it is and we'll put our yellow squash and our zucchini squash in myar bags for keeping for safee keeping these will keep up to 25 years I also want to make sure I'm cutting them thin enough that I can put my rack on here and yeah I need to go a little bit thinner and that's okay we'll pop these guys on here and we'll slip them into the freeze dryer here in just a second easy enough we've got everything all cut up ready to rock and roll we're just simply going to open the door it's magnetic slide these guys in here I have already pre-cooled this so it's already cold inside just slip these guys right on in all the way to the back you can do it there you go make a friend we don't quite have four full racks so now I know exactly how much it takes to fill four racks one's way over here I'll slide this guy in this thing's going to ask you a couple questions when you get ready to use it close the door it's going to say is the drain closed I'm going to hit yes please insert your food press yes when food is inserted yes press start it's going to ask me if my drain line is closed over here and it is closed and what this does is it freezes it instantly and creates a vacuum that vacuum draws all of the moisture out of the food moisture and oxygen is what causes is rotting okay so when we take all the moisture out it can't rot that's why it lasts 25 years so we're going to give this about 24 hours maybe a little bit longer and what's going to happen is right on the inside here there'll be some ice that builds up once we get done this will draw a vacuum we'll loosen the vacuum and the ice will melt and come out of this drain into a drain pan so you guys know we're pulling about 400 watts right now that's about about how many watts it spikes at about close to 1,000 watts and it pulls about 400 watts the whole time so you're talking about pennies to preserve this stuff this is not how the prep for Life freeze dryer comes okay it comes on this cart right here that can stay in your kitchen or you can just put it on your countertop just like we have right here we'll see you guys in a day or so so we're done you see the vacuum is releasing on the seal right here so for squash guys you need to know and I wasn't prepared for this it's been actually about 32 hours for the squash so let's open it up pull out a tray you don't want to expose this to the elements too awful quickly but that's what it looks like when it's done it looks pretty close to what it looked like when we started uh I'm going to bite one just so you see what it's like not good hold on I'm up I just added some water to my uh life uh that didn't taste good however all you have to do is take these drop them in a bowl of water rehydrate them and you can fry them up just like you'd fry any squash what we want to do really quickly here uh when you order your Harvest Right freezer rer you get these Critters right here these are oxygen absorbers you want to tear this open however many bags you think you're going to use you want to pull out some oxygen absorbers we're going to pull out three of these little critters set them right over here and we got to move pretty fast so this is a sealer uh for the bags we'll just seal that bag off good to go now this bag is sealed and ready to rock and roll I do recommend that you put that under vacuum now next thing we're going to do is we're going to take our myar bag I do have one from 2022 we're going to open that in a second simply pick up our rubber mat which is super awesome these little silicone mats make life so much better we'll just slide this right down into our resealable myar bag so if you're doing snacks and stuff like that you can pack these for road trips you can pack these for hiking trips you can pack these just to have healthy snacks around the house I'll say that zucchini and squash is sweet there's a lot of sugar in zucchini and squash and a lot of water in zucchini and squash so we put it in the bag cover it up drop our uh oxygen absorber throw the zip lock on it does not need to be vacuum sealed then we put it in our sealer just like so now our bag is absolutely sealed next thing we do we got to label it I didn't label the last one but it's from 2022 this is from 724 and squash labeled ready to rock and roll now you saw what just came out let's show you what's been in a bag since 2022 tear it open open it up look at that isn't that awesome since 20122 still the same absolutely the same all you got to do drop that in some water throw it on the frying pan and it's just about exactly the same as if it was fresh out of the garden so folks that's how a freeze dryer works this stuff is good for up to 25 years in these bags now that I've opened it it's not good for 25 years so I need to go ahead and reseal this bag let's might as well see if we can reseal it just go right there bam just below our ZIP loock portion it's sealed and ready to rock and roll so again that'll keep for another 25 years pretty awesome stuff so I'll be eating squash that tastes just like it came out of the garden in December this year thank you guys so much hit that like button subscribe to the channel tell me what you want to see here on food Friday on the Stony Ridge we'll see you next time woo all right I'm ready to rock and roll this be will get away for me go away be do you want some squash no armor welcome back to the top of my head there we go that's better hey there folks this is Josh Stony Ridge very not so bright have way more than I can do I would love to trip over the tripod