preservation Preservation thread

[Ashen]

Well here's my second time trying the "snake method" on my weber grill, did it a few days ago to make a boneless Boston butt pork roast and threw some peps on just for shits and gigs, and dehydrated them afterwards and was impressed with the amount of the pecan smoke they took on, so I'm doing a solely peppers thing this time without water trays to keep the moisture to a minimum and smoke to the maximum, and then freeze/dehydrate what I have afterwards.. Tell me about my thinking if it's good or bad.. Thinking about maybe trying some tomatoes and tomatillos?? Squash? Okra?

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Pretty cool. Just an observation,that seems like an excessive amount of smoking wood in your snake. Especially pecan which can impart bitterness if you oversmoke with it. Personally I would set up with 2 maybe 3 pieces in the first half of the snake for heavy woods like pecan mesquite. 3 or 4 for fruit Woods or sugar maple. For meat smoke uptake tails off after the meat hits about 140 f so the back half of your snake really doesn't need any. Same goes for peppers. Once the pods go leathery, wrinkly and start changing colour you really aren't getting a lot of smoke uptake. Burning the pecan won't hurt unless it spikes the temp but why bother when less expensive charcoal will do. Of course as always YMMV and everyone has their personal taste preferences. .

 

[skullbiker]

I thought that I would kind of go through a load of freeze dryed peppers. This will be fairly photo heavy. OK, starting with a bunch of my Red Morugas

I put the colander on the scale and zeroed it. Looks like 1418 grams.

I pureed these

They fit into these molds. These will be prefrozen untill I have a full load.

Then a bunch of mixed red superhots, mixed yellow superhots, and Madbalz Brown, all prefrozen and molded.

And five trays of prefrozen molded plus some Jalapenos and Cherry Bombs plus placentas for both. Thats a full load for my freeze dryer.

Here is the machine loaded up.

Then place the door insulator in and set to freeze and dry. I usually freeze to -62F, but always at least -50F.

But, iI have taken it as cold as this.

Then, after 24 hours or more, they are done.

If anyone is following the Fastest Pepper thread, these Madbalz Brown ones would be perfect for The Hott Dude as suppositories. Pop em in, let them rehydrate, then Hershey squirt out hot and high pressure!

Vacuum sealed in bags and jars. If sealed in mylar bags with a food safe oxygen absorber they would be good for 20+ years.

The ice inside of the chamber is the moisture from those 5 trays.

That ice after defrost/drain out was this much water, just over 1 gallon or 4 litres.

 

[Ashen]

That is just too cool. I am assuming you can pull a vacuum without freezing, or super chill without pulling a vacuum? So many ideas racing through my mind. Lol

 

[skullbiker]

That is just too cool. I am assuming you can pull a vacuum without freezing, or super chill without pulling a vacuum? So many ideas racing through my mind. Lol

Yes, you can do both of those things. Also, a lot on You Tube and Facebook. I do not do Facebook so I am completey out of the loop there.

 

[dragonsfire]

Packed my Tomato's
Romas, 1 pound dried, at least 10lb fresh (See Harvest thread), three days at 115f, added rock salt to the bag to help then vacuum packed.
 

 

[JD4JC]

I am experimenting with our new HarvestRight freeze-dryer. We FD'd 25 Lb. of fresh tomatoes that a neighbor gave us, powdered the processed wedges and saved into quart canning jars, not vacuumed, but with an oxygen absorber packet in each. The 25# of tomatoes turned into four quarts of powder. We've also F-D a small number of Ghost Peppers that we raised, and I'm working up my courage to powder them in a blender. A suggestion from another thread was that I use a hazmat suit for that stage.
 
Now what to do with the powders. Suggesitons?

 

[dragonsfire]

I just harvested about 6 " (leaf stacked) Swiss chard. cut in half, sprinkled a bit of rock salt in the bag and vacuum sealed them, in the Freezer now. Good for at least a year if necessary.
 

 

[YAMracer754]

Snake it up and get shwifty with it! Just keep the top choke 180 degrees from the point of fire on the snake as to draw air across the item(s) on grate! Adulterated FTW! LOL.

 
What's your procedure for smoking them?  I dry and grind a lot of peppers, but never smoked 'em first.  
 
Maybe I should practice some adulteration with my peppers before I get to dehydrating them.
 
EDIT:  Wow, did I totally miss your post just above.  I happen to have the exact same grill and chimney on my back deck.  Adulteration by "snake method" it will be.

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[YAMracer754]

I read the same thing about how it imparts the smoke in relation to freshness and heat of the item in the grill.. Makes sense! I didn't get any bitterness on anything I did including the boneless Boston butt but I kept it on the first half of snake for that and it went well over 8 hours with still a couple coals left to burn! Was thoroughly impressed as I am a charcoal grill aficionado haha in regards to the Weber and was always under the impression I couldn't keep smoking Temps while cooking with flammable wood but where there's a will there's a way.... Or a google search! I wanted to try Apple maybe I will get to find some.

Pretty cool. Just an observation,that seems like an excessive amount of smoking wood in your snake. Especially pecan which can impart bitterness if you oversmoke with it. Personally I would set up with 2 maybe 3 pieces in the first half of the snake for heavy woods like pecan mesquite. 3 or 4 for fruit Woods or sugar maple. For meat smoke uptake tails off after the meat hits about 140 f so the back half of your snake really doesn't need any. Same goes for peppers. Once the pods go leathery, wrinkly and start changing colour you really aren't getting a lot of smoke uptake. Burning the pecan won't hurt unless it spikes the temp but why bother when less expensive charcoal will do. Of course as always YMMV and everyone has their personal taste preferences. .

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[YAMracer754]

Awesome post!

I thought that I would kind of go through a load of freeze dryed peppers. This will be fairly photo heavy. OK, starting with a bunch of my Red Morugas

ED6515A2-25D9-4CB3-8EA6-B0BF43F4A0AD.jpeg

I put the colander on the scale and zeroed it. Looks like 1418 grams.

96F4AC5D-1048-439B-B419-85026ACCD9C4.jpeg

I pureed these

43B5D252-2D5E-4A8D-93A4-DAC5636282AB.jpeg

They fit into these molds. These will be prefrozen untill I have a full load.

8476302B-6B36-4AF6-8C68-A915245D4828.jpeg

Then a bunch of mixed red superhots, mixed yellow superhots, and Madbalz Brown, all prefrozen and molded.

C113BD7F-754B-469C-8845-1101B504767B.jpeg

0D3FECAB-7E0E-4185-8FF9-BC342D577DA1.jpeg

686565C2-0BC0-44E2-9C3F-A5F49F3A8EA9.jpeg

And five trays of prefrozen molded plus some Jalapenos and Cherry Bombs plus placentas for both. Thats a full load for my freeze dryer.

BEC9D2CA-82F9-40CB-AD4C-4B4D28AA910E.jpeg

Here is the machine loaded up.

87BF93BE-5743-4405-9563-12516FB87942.jpeg

Then place the door insulator in and set to freeze and dry. I usually freeze to -62F, but always at least -50F.

4CA4EE80-3E79-4D87-AE2C-3B9970027850.jpeg

DC61FBEA-2F1E-4526-B662-3BB7A5383905.jpeg

But, iI have taken it as cold as this.

425EAE83-E958-4ABA-9E1C-9230F7CB550D.jpeg

Then, after 24 hours or more, they are done.

FB4892FB-4917-45EC-B54F-ABA1766E7305.jpeg

B2DB3451-60AB-49A6-8C7E-B2B7D5D3510B.jpeg

284C4DBF-C73A-4501-AFC3-53D68FFBBAAF.jpeg

If anyone is following the Fastest Pepper thread, these Madbalz Brown ones would be perfect for The Hott Dude as suppositories. Pop em in, let them rehydrate, then Hershey squirt out hot and high pressure!

71E02837-B04E-452F-9BB7-D7F74E2DBF6C.jpeg

Vacuum sealed in bags and jars. If sealed in mylar bags with a food safe oxygen absorber they would be good for 20+ years.

07049317-94FA-4764-BD19-7F0BB1680CEF.jpeg

The ice inside of the chamber is the moisture from those 5 trays.

4A009664-C020-402B-A3D4-0DA686113A55.jpeg

That ice after defrost/drain out was this much water, just over 1 gallon or 4 litres.

94304042-CCE8-41E3-A9BC-D67B83AA8D75.jpeg

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[karoo]

Awesome post!
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Awesome thread all round!

 

[dragonsfire]

More Tomatoes ready for packing, 470gr sealed up
 

 

[JD4JC]

Here's an image of ~5 Lb. F-D tomatoes, skins, seeds and all. After drying, we powdered them in a blender, and the powder originally filled the whole quart jar. I guess it rehydrated somewhat and shrunk. HarvestRight told me that with the oxygen absorber and vacuum seal, the dried tomatoes would last 25 years if stored in a cool, dark place. The HR F-D machine will vacuum seal quart canning jars with the racks out of the chamber, and by plugging the vacuum pump directly into an electrical outlet and turning on the power switch.
 
The FD Toms rehydrate on approximately 1:1 ratio (Waterowder). It makes wonderful tomato paste, tomato sauce and pasta sauce. I just added about 1/2 Tsp of garlic granules, onion powder basil and dried oregano to 1C of powder + 1C water (adjust the water amount to determine thickness of the sauce), simmer for 30 mins to soften the seeds (or less if you process the sauce in a counter blender or with a stick blender. Exceptionally good!
 
Is there not a way to rotate images once uploaded?
 
 

 

[dragonsfire]

Edit picture with free Gimp program before.
 

 

[JD4JC]

It's properly oriented in my Mac Preview!

 

[dragonsfire]

I did 5 trays of Onions, fit into 2 and a half sandwich bags, blitz one of them into powder, couldn't help nibbling on them, nice sweet chips
 

 

[YAMracer754]

1.5lbs reapers and a pound of ghosts for 2.5lb total peppers turned into AJ puree! Did half with the addition of atomic grape tomato puree + garlic added; other half just the peppers, agave, salt, and vinegar. All seeding was done with my kitchenaid FSVGA parts after a quick blender blitz to break up the flesh to go through more readily-the trick to using the kitchenaid is to keep rerunning it until your getting just seed and core, glad it worked as it saved me boatloads of time hand seeding all of em! Still couldn't save my hands from catching fire and the capsicum oils in the air! 15 mins Pressure canned 'just cuz', as I had yet to use it for canning. Extremely hot concentrate but DAMN Good! Still very time consuming but would rather do a lot than a little as it's all the same steps! At least 3 hours but that's chillin drinkin type hours, and includes washing all the peppers methodically..

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[dragonsfire]

Great Color !!

 

[YAMracer754]

Should have seen it while simmering down it was the deepest-brightest-yet dark at the same time red I've ever seen ever from a sauce! It stains everything it gets on, plastic included. Had a hell of a time cleaning all the white plastic parts like kitchenaid blender etc! Contains like 150+ superhots! Still need to figure out fast-like weeks ago-what to do with another 6 pounds of reapers!

Going to do it again tonight with choc Habs as I have those coming out my ears as well and already lost a bunch from not processing from splitting cracking etc and just falling on the ground because they're so loaded an have not been harvested or used due to everything else going on and the massive surplus the plants are putting out. So got to use them ASAP! Wonder what would taste good with them or just keep em single in the puree recipe...

Great Color !!

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[skullbiker]

This thread needs a little bump. And since I was cleaning my basement today, here are some ice cream bars I freeze dryed about a year ago. Do that with your dehydrator! (and no, they have not been in the freezer)