The Advantages of Freeze-Dried Foods

In addition to complementing your other stored foods well, most freeze-dried food offers additional advantages: looking fresh, tasting fresh, staying fresh, and weighing less than fresh foods. Another advantage is that they add variety to your meals while being quick and easy to prepare.

After freeze-dried foods are re-hydrated, many are comparable to foods you might Replace in the freezer section of your grocery store. Since freeze-dried foods re-hydrate well and taste much like frozen foods, they enable the meals you create to taste much like those you create using fresh foods.

The following attributes of freeze-dried foods highlight some of the main reasons they are a storage favorite:

Fresh appearance. Freeze-dried foods are first flash frozen and then have the moisture removed so they maintain much of their original shape, texture, and appearance.

Fresh taste. Freeze-dried food is not dried via heat processing so it retains more of the aroma and flavor of the original food. The freeze-drying process also maintains most of the original food’s nutritional content. Freeze-drying simply removes the water, not the flavor.

Lasting freshness. The freeze-drying process removes water from prepared foods. To further ensure the lasting freshness of these foods, both Provident Pantry® and Mountain House® #10 cans and pouches have oxygen removed or oxygen absorbers added. This helps keep the food tasting fresh.

Low storage weight. Freeze-dried foods have approximately 98 percent of their water removed, resulting in foods that typically weigh 75 to 90 percent less than the original food. The freeze-drying process results in foods that are exceptionally light. This makes the food easy to package, transport, and store. For this reason, freeze-dried foods are excellent for your camping and backpacking trips and even in your 72-hour emergency kit.

Easy preparation. The freeze-drying process allows for quick re-hydration of the product, making freeze-dried foods ideal for your food storage. Most freeze-dried items are reconstituted by adding warm water, waiting about five to ten minutes, and draining the excess water. You may then use the food in your recipes.

Just add boiling water to your freeze-dried foods, and they'll be ready in minutes!

Variety. Traditional food storage items such as wheat, rice, beans, sugar, and dehydrated foods allow you to create a variety of recipes. Freeze-dried foods add a whole new dimension to what you can create with these stored dehydrated basics. For example, with the help of freeze-dried meats, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables, you can use your dehydrated basics to create family favorites such as pizza or tacos, sweeteners for cereals, additions for soup bases, breakfast casseroles, desserts and much more.

Take advantage of the benefits of freeze-dried foods today! Shop for Mountain House freeze-dried foods here.