Freeze-Dried Greens

It’s been about two months since I’d freeze-dried anything at all. My how new toys fall by the wayside, eh? But, today I decided to give it a go again, this time choosing to freeze-dry some of the Swiss Chard that grows like a weed in our greenhouse and grow beds:

But, those plants still looked too good to cut down, so I choose this plant that’s falling over instead:

I washed each of the leaves and dried on clean towels, like so:

I then cut out the stems and did my best to fit all of the greens on my five trays, though some surely overlapped:

Yes, some definitely overlapped, lol:

I’d started this batch in the afternoon thinking that it would at least run all night, but as the late evening neared, I’d feared that it wasn’t going to take as long as I’d figured (should that even be a concern?). In any case, the freeze-drying process ended at some point overnight because the trays were frozen when I got up the next morning, having taken barely fourteen hours at that point:

So, my guess is that it barely needed ten hours to complete the entire process, including the initial freezing and drying, which was unexpected. Typically, the freezing process alone needs several to complete, but when I checked, it was finished in only about three hours. In any case, I was happy it didn’t take days as some foods do. Here’s the finished product:

The freeze-dried Swiss Chard sounded very much like dry autumn leaves when I touched them, which indicated they were finished. In fact, they crumped so much as I put them into the Mylar bag that I was able to get the entire batch into a single bag:

Ultimately, I ended up with 18 ounces of greens:

As expected, I didn’t find any freeze-dried Swiss Chard, but I did find a one-pound bag of freeze-dried Kale powder for $17.56. Our electricity bill changed recently, and through the coming spring, we pay $0.08 per kwh, which means I believe I spent about $1.70 on electricity. Add in another $1 for the bag and O2 absorber, and I spent $2.70 for this batch.

While I can’t say it was worth my time, I’m always happy to gain the experience and add to my food storage.