Pros and Cons of Freeze Drying
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Freeze drying is also popularly known as lyophilization. In freeze drying food items are frozen at first and then places into a vacuum chamber to get rid of all the moisture. Once all the moisture is removed from the food items they are then vacuum packed into airtight containers. This process requires complex modern equipments and so cannot be done at home by individuals.
There are numerous advantages of using freeze drying. Let us explore them one by one. Freeze drying preserves all the flavor and necessary vitamins in the food item as there is no heat damage to final product. Yeast and bacteria cannot survive on freeze dried food and so it is perfectly safe to consume it. It is very light in weight and easy to carry and therefore is very famous among astronauts, hikers or campers. It does not cause shrinkage or toughening of the dried food. The food product’s taste and smell remains unchanged. Also it has a long shelf life so can be easily stored for long period of time. It is very easy to rehydrate the food items; you just need to add water to it and they regain their normal texture. On the downside, the equipments needed in this process are expensive and so the freeze dried food items are in-turn expensive. More space is needed to store the food item since it remains full size.
As you can see, the advantages of freeze dried food far outweigh the negatives. Since the taste and smell of the food is maintained in this process it is the best method to store food products over a period of time.