Are home made freeze dried meals as good as mountain house?
Posted by TheDude50484@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 26 comments
Hey everyone, I'm leaning towards buying a harvest right freeze dryer and I'm just wondering if the freeze dried meals you can make at home are as good as the mountain house meals with all their fancy chemicals added in (not a good thing, I know)? Does the home made stuff have a similar shelf life of 25 years if sealed and stored properly?
Steve4704@reddit
I have one but never tried mountain house. The shelf life depends on what you dried. I do chicken and burgers. I use the leanest and rinse fat off before drying and use o2 absorbers. There's no way they will reach 10 years let alone 25. I have eaten a lot of MRE's in my day. They do last a long time, but at a cost. FD'd soup is another thing I do a lot of. Again, low fat. Things like bean soup with ham tastes pretty good, but the texture of the beans is gone.
I have the HR drier and so far it is ok. Read up on how horrible the company is if you have problems. There is a HR sub here, but it is pretty heavily moderated so check the web for reviews.
Ok-Resolve-2258@reddit
I just watched a really good video on YouTube with this guy freeze drying all kinds of things. His channel is Technology Connextras. It's a very, very detailed and well presented video. It did not go well. I won't be buying one.
Hot_Annual6360@reddit
Are there machines like that for the home?
Sleddoggamer@reddit
There are, but right now might be a rough time to buy. One of the companies every goes to dodge a price increase q couple of years ago and last look i had they were so much worse than usual
Hot_Annual6360@reddit
Thank you
Sleddoggamer@reddit
Yup. I don't know when or if the prices will go back to normal
Last I saw a harvest right small was running for 2.5k on their website. When I was shopping the same machine was going for $750 and seemed to dip to less
Hot_Annual6360@reddit
Buffff, what a price increase
Eazy12345678@reddit
probably not you dont have the expensive equipment. or the knowledge
thumperj@reddit
Let me add a different direction on the DIY. Every supplier of these freeze dried meals provides very large packages for a family of four for each package. My family is small (two people) and small (we aren't very big eaters) so have 30 lbs of corn bread and 15 lbs of tuna salad for each meal is just going to 90% wasted.
Doing it ourselves allows us to meter our much smaller meals that won't mostly get wasted. While it's still not a 25 year food backup, it's much more efficient, if we ever do it. With that in mind, does it change the calculus? Or is there a way to cut these packs down to a useful amount for just two people? Or am I over thinking this and can just eat corn bread for a week and love it because we have food when others don't?
sigh And because of the world we live in, yes, I'm being hyperbolic about the sizes of the packages. It's a joke. Satire, even. But note joking that they are WAY too much food for just us.
456name789@reddit
There’s a new brand of freeze dryer just on the market called Blue Alpine. Not much out there about them yet, except standard tray sizes.
But to answer your question, it depends. I don’t like mountain house, so imo most anything would be “as good or better.” However, I have eaten mountain house from, I think, the ‘70’s and it was still as good as one would expect and I didn’t get sick.
I’m considering a freeze dryer because I process a lot of food for storage. I mostly can these items, and that gets really heavy in large amounts and takes up a lot of room.
A freeze dryer will also take up space but in my case I can put it in a place I don’t use for other storage. It’s also away from the living areas so the noise won’t bother me.
I haven’t considered freeze drying “meals,” per se. I’m more of an ingredient canner. However, I do a lot of batch cooking already and being able to freeze dry it instead of freezing them would be something I’d explore.
I would not expect a freeze dryer to pay for itself. If you start using it as Christmas presents or something, maybe. If you currently buy a lot of freeze dried foods, it might. 🤷♀️
DwarvenRedshirt@reddit
I think the 25+ year shelf life claims for Home Freeze dryers are a bit disingenuous. There's been very little university research done on storage life for home freeze dried foods (as compared to commercial freeze dried). I think the home freeze dryer companies are using commercial freeze dried numbers and basic freeze dried lifespan studies to base their claims, and there's substantially more variables in a home environment/home freeze dryer.
That said, the foods will usually last a lot longer than not freeze drying them.
In terms of whether the food you make at home is as good as Mountain House. I think you need to have a realistic outlook here. Can you make meals as good as Mountain House? Yes. Can you make them instantly? No, you're going to need a lot of experimentation and testing to see what works out best for your meal. You're going to need to do all the work that Mountain House already did years ago for their meals.
Some things to highlight though that can tweak the value equation. You can make the meals the way you want them with the components you want. You can also make meals specific to your dietary restrictions (low sodium, low carb, no gluten, vegetarian, etc).
TheCarcissist@reddit
I use my meals for camping, backpacking etc. So I dont intend them to last forever. Quality wise, there is no comparison, even my worst meal tastes better than the best mountain house. Will it last 20+ years... maybe. My biggest problem has been with mylar not sealing properly. Im saving up to get a chamber vacuum sealer which I think will help that problem. Worst case scenario would be i can tell which bags havent sealed properly
infinitum3d@reddit
I’ve heard that the time and labor is counterproductive. Apparently it’s cheaper and more reliable to just buy the meals?
RootsRockRebel66@reddit
Yeah but only 200 calories per serving? Are we feeding hamsters?
There_Are_No_Gods@reddit
Marketing terms are not very straightforward. A "serving" is not intended to represent a "meal", but more of a "typical sized portion...as part of a larger meal".
About the only useful way to utilize "serving size" or "servings per container" is when multiplying by something like "calories per serving" to determine "calories per container".
Measuring calories per dollar is a useful metric generally, with the usual caveat that you have to ensure it's based on real food with some nutrition rather than the common scam of "orange drink" (almost entirely just sugar).
infinitum3d@reddit
Agreed.
I’m looking at it as 36 packages = 36 servings.
I guess if you use it as a base and add whatever you can forage/hunt to it, you can get more servings.
I generally use the MH packs as bases and add rice/potatoes/tuna, because they’re so loaded with salt.
Cute-Consequence-184@reddit
Better
You control the daily levels and the spice levels
PrettyAcanthisitta95@reddit
Do it! It’s possible.
I am always running my FD’s. I recently had a meal from 2021 and although it DID lose some taste, it was still good and worth having.
((Freeze Drying takes a lot of trial and error to get right))
TheRealBunkerJohn@reddit
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: No matter how diligent you are about processing your home freeze-dried meals, you won't be able to match a factor-made meal in regards to ensuring a 25+ year shelf life. You just realistically can't ensure the same level of quality.
Will home freeze-dried meals last a long time? Yes, absolutely! CAN they last 25+ years? Sure! But they should not be approached with the same confidence as buying a professionally manufactured one.
ISeeReydar3@reddit
Well... I strongly disagree with an exception. Here is why.
While I think there are better hobby options out there, yes this could be a hobby, that you move on from.
After learning about the trial and error with learning to use these, you will waste food at the start. You will make slices too big that fail to dehydrate enough, you will fail to run the machine long enough, make foods that do not rehydrate well... it is a process.
You absolutely will not save money doing this at home. Compared to buying mountain house food in bulk, no way.
These machines are very energy intensive for hours on end. They consume a lot of time both processing the food, making noise in your house when the pump runs, and the volume of food they make is really not that much per batch. This is not ever a cheap process.
As for the cost
blacksmithMael@reddit
I’ve got a freeze dryer, which I didn’t buy with any thoughts of saving money. I wanted to be able to make freeze dried food for camping and hiking, to have an easy way to process our produce for long term storage, and also to have fun exploring.
Having said that, I can see it being a money saver in the long term with a couple of caveats. First, we have a big solar array, so the freeze dryer runs on what we generate. There’s still a cost of course: that’s energy we are not being paid to export. Second, most of what we freeze dry is from our farm, so our going costs per freeze dried product are low.
We do a lot of freeze dried fruit and similar things which are pretty costly to buy, but our children love. I’ve not yet cared enough to try and work out when or if we’ll break even though.
TheRealBunkerJohn@reddit
Very, very goo to know- I appreciate the insight. I think it also varies on the type of meals you're freeze drying, and you make very good points. I was incorrect it seems- but I think it'll vary from person to person (cooking in bulk, etc.) I'll edit the post to reflect that.
loveboner@reddit
My parents made some freeze dried chicken soup. It was very tasty. It had chicken, carrots, peas, and celery.
Overall-Tailor8949@reddit
Doubtful as far as longevity in storage. HOWEVER, as others have pointed out you can prep the meals in the exact portion sizes you want and with the flavor/nutrient profiles your family likes the most. The sticking points are going to be the cost of the drier and the prep times during "canning season". The prep time you sort of "get back" when you use the prepped food at a later date. I just wouldn't PLAN on them being edible/safe more than a few years down the road.
freedomfromthepast@reddit
Yes. But don't expect fresh cooked results.
I like to FD basics and keep them around to make meals out of, but I have seen lots of HR users freeze whole meals, rehydrate and eat like that.
I saw the report yesterday that the Fed is going to prioritize jobs over inflation and the article estimates inflation will be really bad by next July. So I am going to stock up now while I can still afford it.
If you live somewhere that still has farmers markets, start there. Sam's and Costco are good sources as well.
Tip: I buy the frozen organic veggies/fruit from Costco, dump them on a tray and run them though. They are already flash frozen, so no prep. Just run then store.
ElectroHiker@reddit
Completely depends on what you're freeze-drying, how well you do it, and how well you store it. You can absolutely make better tasting meals that will last 10+ years if you do it yourself, and you can add the exact nutrients and flavor you want.
I just have to get ahold of an affordable freeze drier so I'm not drooling over other people's preps lol