Freeze-Dried Kale

I can’t even remember the last time I posted about something I freeze-dried, mostly because I hadn’t found anything new to freeze-dry, until my wife suggested I get off my rear end and freeze-dry some of the kale we’re growing in our garden.

I thought it was a waste of time, but because I hadn’t been using our freeze dryer much in the past year, I agreed. So, I gathered a bunch of leaves (I didn’t weight it but there were at least a dozen hefty leaves there):

I removed the kale leaves from the main stem, then rinsed the leaves and used our salad spinner to remove excess water, though I don’t feel the salad spinner did as much as I’d hoped for:

I then stuffed as many leaves as I thought could fit on a tray and repeated for all 5 trays:

It might be difficult to tell from the above photo, but the kale leaves really bunched up tall such that I was concerned they wouldn’t fit in the freeze dryer properly. But it turned out to not be much of a problem because I just smashed them down to fit:

Unfortunately, I did have a problem that I don’t recall having before, and that was a very brief power outage (of a few seconds) while the freeze dryer was still running. Long story short, the power went out shortly after I went to bed, and rather than checking on the kale, I waited until morning. That turned out to be a mistake because the freeze dryer didn’t restart where it left off. Rather, it just read “Initializing…” on the display when I checked the following morning.

Ultimately, I turned the unit off and had to restart the entire freeze-drying process over again. That wasted time, energy, and money, though the entire process only needed about ten hours to complete for this batch of kale, so it wasn’t as devastating as wasting two days on other foods. And, as you can see, the Kale shriveled up quite a bit:

Although I didn’t take a photo like I usually do of the kale in Mylar bags, I ended up with only two ounces, which fit inside two Mylar bags, of freeze-dried kale after it was finished. (I didn’t have to break the Kale leaves apart quite a bit to get it all to fit.)

Was this worth the effort?

I don’t know. I think the electric bill, had I not needed to redo the freeze-drying process, would’ve cost less than $1. Add in a few dollars for two Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers, and it didn’t break the bank.

As usual, I checked Amazon for freeze-dried Kale and found several options for Kale powder, though I also found this option for 2-ounces of diced Kale flakes for $17.49. Honestly, the Kale powder at about $30 for two pounds might be the best choice of the bunch.

Anyway, we also have quite a bit of Swiss chard, so I may try that next.