Potato chip cravings don’t mess around. What to do? Easy. Skip the greasy bag of chips and make your own batch from real veggies—and little else.
We love freeze dried veggie chips because they don’t need refrigeration, there are no preservatives, and you can avoid allergens.
Freeze dried veggies have a powerful flavor. They’re the perfect crunchy texture and can easily satisfy those potato chip cravings. All veggies can easily be made into a healthy snack with a little spritz of olive oil and a dash of seasoni
ngs like salt, lemon pepper, Mrs. Dash or even cinnamon. Just slice and freeze dry, then spritz with olive oil and sprinkle with your favorite seasoning or spice. Trust us, freeze dried veggie chips are so good that you might not ever want potato chips again.
We tried kale, sweet potatoes, zucchini, and squash. But lots of vegetables will work and be just as delicious!
How thick should I cut the veggies?
We typically cut approximately 1/4″ and do a double layer on each tray.
Definitely great making veg chips for snacks and definitely much more nutritious and chemical and preservative free. That being said, let me take this opportunity to say how great my harvest right freeze dryer is and how hard the Harvest Right people go out of their way to ensure a good customer experience. I had a vacuum pump failure after a few mos, sorta my fault, but Harvest Right repaired pump and returned it expeditiously and were so courteous and seemingly grateful for my business and bent on doing the right thing. Very satisfied and Thank You Harvest Right for a great machine and great customer service
I can understand kale and zucchini, but not squash and sweet potato. Were they first boiled or broiled or bakes?
In this instance they were blanched. Baked would be great too!
Do you cook your veggies first or just slice and put on the trays? I dried cooked carrots and then they turned white! Cooked beets taste good, but can I put raw beets on the trays?
For most vegetables we recommend a short blanch is better than cooking. We have freeze dried beets both blanched and raw. Both turned out great.
With squash, I boiled it first and it was falling apart when putting on tray, so now I use squash and cucumbers and tomatoes, etc by just slicing em up raw and freeze drying em and they are great snacks. Also, bananas, which if refrigerated at very cold, are much easier and neater to slice. You can always cook later, but sure is easier to slice and dry raw.
Originally bought freeze dryer and planned to learn how to cook and freeze dry so much food that I could maybe save lives during a disaster. Cooking is going so bad that I no longer think I’ll save many people, but I think they’ll at least be a lot happier starving.
I love my Free Dryer. I have used it to do single ingredients as well as full meals. Now I would like to find a supplier for jars that I can suck the air out of as an alternative to the mylar bags. This would be for shorter term storage like chips, bits of fruit etc.
Could someone out there tell me if you should turn freeze drier off between batches or leave it on and only turn off if not being used for days? Thank you. Some circuits don’t do as well being turned off and on.
Tractor Supply usually has great pricing on jars: 9.99 for 6 1/2 gallon jars. 10.99 for 12 wide mouth quart jars.