undead fruit.

April 24, 2006 4:21 PM

How do I work with freeze-dried foods?

I like the idea of having astronaut berries around if I all of a sudden need to bake up some delicious snacky treat when all the stores all closed, but what do I do with them? Do I rehydrate them, and then bake? Throw them in dry? How do I know how much to put in? Could I make delicious smoothies with rehydrated fruits? Would I be better off with plain old frozen fruit entirely?

Basically, I don't know anything about freeze-dried food, except that it exists. Teach me.

posted by digifox to food & drink (3 comments total)

Basically, I don't know anything about freeze-dried food, except that it exists. Teach me.

Since you put it that way, I've got a story.

I attended a wilderness camp when I was a kid. We spent a couple of weeks away from base camp with canoes and tents; so in order to minimize weight, most of the food we carried was freeze-dried. Long story short, a kid got the munchies one afternoon, and he quietly began eating from a bag of tiny, chopped, freeze-dried potatoes. The potatoes rehydrated in his stomach, expanded, and he had to be airlifted by helicopter to a nearby hospital.

Sorry. I don't have any recipes. Just the safety tip.
posted by cribcage at 4:57 PM on April 24, 2006

I haven't had a lot of exposure to dried fruits, but wth dried mushrooms, seafoods, beans, seeds, &c - soaking in a minimum of water (after washing) prior to cooking is pretty standard. Hot water rehydrates faster. In the seafood example, the water that's used to soak it can be used for other things/flavouring/&c.

Hmm, actually, I *have* worked with dried longan; the not-so-dried stuff can be used as is, the so-dry-it's-crunchy required re-hydration in a minimum of water (overnight for simplicity or "several" hours. Much faster in hot water.

Also, different types of food will re-hydrate at different speeds.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 6:06 PM on April 24, 2006

I like freeze dried pineapple. I use in a fancy Ferran Adria pudding/cocktail (recipe here). You don't need to do anything wito prepare the pineapple.
posted by roofus at 4:11 AM on April 25, 2006