Freeze-Dried Pears

I keep hunting for new foods to freeze-dry, in part to try something new for you, but also out of curiosity for me. At some point, however, I’ll have to return to foods I’ve already tried. This week I purchased sixteen pounds of pears from Sam’s Club for $26.48:

Initially, I was looking for berries, like strawberries, but they’re too expensive right now, and I figured pears would be easy to slice up:

It still took me about a half hour to slice them all up, but what was most difficult was trying to play Tetris with the pieces. Unlike most of the fruit I’d tried thus far, the pears were most challenging to fit on the trays.

What I continue to have trouble with is figuring out how much of any one food to purchase to freeze dry. I’d assumed that I could fit roughly one box of pears on a tray, but I only ended up using little more than two boxes across five trays. In fact, I had almost seven pounds of pears left:

It’s not a big deal because I’ll use them in our fruit smoothies, but it is annoying not being better able to judge how much I’ll need. Granted, the thickness of slices makes a big difference here, too, so maybe I should reconsider that aspect. But I’m used to dehydrating foods, which requires them to be rather thinly cut; I’d simply assumed freeze-drying is similar.

In any case, they needed about twenty-four hours by my estimation, though I didn’t take them out of the freeze-dryer until thirty hours because I went to bed before the unit finished freeze-drying the pears.

Aside from appearing slightly duller in color, the pears turned out good. As with everything else thus far, I tried a few pieces just to see if they snap and taste good. The pears did both.

After packaging, I ended up with roughly 1.12 pounds (18 ounces) of finished product:

Total Cost and Comparisons

I briefly looked for freeze-dried pears online, but they don’t seem to sell bulk packages or #10 cans. I did find this 1.2 oz (pack of 6) freeze-dried pear snacks for $26.99, which I would need to have purchased two-and-a-half times that amount to equal what I freeze-dried at home for a total cost of $67.48.

As for my costs, I spent $14.71 on the pears that I was able to freeze-dry. I spent another $4.14 on electricity (from previous energy usage calculations at $3.30 per 24 hours), so the total cost is $18.85.

One reader pointed out that I should be including my time in the calculations as well as amortizing the unit, both of which are good ideas, but I think I’ll continue to keep my calculations simple.

A Problem I’m Noticing

For the most part, freeze-drying has been a breeze. The Harvest Right unit is easy to use and almost brain-dead simple to operate. Aside from a few annoyances, like the on/off switch being on the bottom rear of the unit, and the vacuum pump running constantly when drying, I have nothing to complain about.

What I have noticed is that the Mylar bags aren’t sealing well:

If you take a closer look at the photo above, there are three sealer lines. The one at the top is pretty even; the line right below it isn’t even at all (there are skips), and the line at the bottom (the darkest sealer line) is somewhere in-between. I’ve always sealed bags twice for this very reason, and I don’t tend to worry much about it until now.

You see, Mylar bags seal by melting two sheets together. If all goes well, the bag is sealed and no oxygen can enter, but even a small failure in the seal will be a problem, which is why what I’m seeing is concerning.

Now, the Harvest Right manual states that I should be sealing Mylar bags at the highest setting (either a seven or eight out of eight) on the impulse sealer dial. Other, thinner, bags might be a four or five. I’ve tried different settings, including a lower dial setting, but that makes things worse. I’ve also tried holding the sealer in place for several seconds after sealing a bag to let it cool down, but that doesn’t seem to help either.

I also went and checked previous Mylar bags that I sealed, and most sealer lines appear okay, though more recent bags might be showing signs of trouble. So, it could be that I’m having trouble recently for some unknown reason. I did wipe down the sealer just in case, and I’m trying to let the unit cool down between uses. We’ll see how things go next week.