Freeze-Dried Pineapple

This week, I chose to try pineapple. So, I stopped by my local Sam’s Club and purchased a box of five large pineapples for $14.20:

As with the bananas and applies I freeze-dried in previous weeks, preparation took longer than I’d hoped for, but mostly because I spent more time cutting larger chunks into smaller ones with the hopes of reducing drying time:

Here’s a closer look:

As you can tell, I didn’t do a very good job of uniformity, but there’s only so much I’m willing to do.

(On another note, I didn’t use parchment paper this time, which might have been a mistake because a lot of the chunks stuck to the trays. As such, I spent more time than I thought just trying to remove them so I could package the chucks for storage. Not sure if I’ll continue this trend, but cleaning the trays was more difficult, too.)

Anyway, I knew that pineapple was mostly water, so I expected it to take longer than the other fruits, but I didn’t expect it to take more than two days! Here’s a screenshot during my impatient period, waiting for it to finish:

Ultimately, the freeze dryer needed 49 total hours before it decided it was done. I figured the final product was fine, but the first thing I’ve always done thus far is to taste one, and it tasted great! It was very sweet, but I noticed that the chunk I ate felt a tad chewy when I bit into it, so I tried two more pieces, both of which seemed about the same. But, because I have no idea what I’m doing yet, I chose to let the machine dry for a few more hours just in case.

(Interestingly, the pineapple needed the longest freeze time thus far, a total of twelve hours. This might finally convince me to pre-freeze food in our chest freezer.)

After I’d thought about it a bit more, I figured that the pineapple was actually done, but the “flexibility” in the chunks I ate had more to do with a higher sugar content than still retaining water, though I’m only speculating. In any case, the freeze dryer ran for a full 51 hours before I ended the process.

Here’s what the pineapple looked like when finished:

Basically, they look a lot like the originals, as one would expect, only more pale.

Ultimately, I ended up with 2.27 lbs of freeze-dried pineapple after starting with 14.71 lbs.

Total cost=$19.55, which assumes, based of previous calculations, $3.31 to run the machine for 24 hours.

Searching online for freeze-dried pineapple chunks, I found an Augason Farms #10 (12 oz.) can for $39 as of this writing. Since I essentially just made three cans of my own, this would’ve cost me $117 to purchase. I guess I could say I saved almost $100. Yeah, me. 🙂