Freeze Drying at Home: My Experience with the Harvest Right Medium
Two summers ago, I watched pounds of perfectly ripe strawberries from our garden go soft faster than we could eat or preserve them. My third dehydrator had bit the dust and I was ready for something different. Despite my best efforts with canning, dehydrating, and freezing, I was losing too much of our harvest to time. That's when I started seriously considering home freeze drying.
The idea of preserving food with all its nutrition, flavor, and texture intact was appealing, but I'll be honest, the investment felt daunting. After months of research and watching countless YouTube reviews, I finally took the plunge. Here's what I've learned after two years of freeze drying everything from garden berries to complete meals.
Why Freeze Drying?
Freeze drying removes 98% of moisture from food while maintaining its cellular structure. Unlike dehydrating, which uses heat and can destroy nutrients and alter texture, freeze drying preserves almost everything. The food maintains its original shape, retains most vitamins and minerals, and when rehydrated, tastes remarkably close to fresh.
For families who grow their own food, preserve harvests, or want emergency food storage, it's a game changer. Freeze dried foods can last 25-30 years when properly stored, compared to 1-2 years for frozen goods or 2-5 years for canned items.
The versatility impressed me most. I've successfully freeze dried strawberries, blueberries, corn, green beans, complete casseroles, soups, and even ice cream for the kids. The strawberries taste like concentrated summer, and the vegetables rehydrate beautifully for cooking. I honestly have a hard time keeping my family stocked with freeze dried treats and snacks. They eat more of them in more things than they ever did with the dehydrators.
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Choosing the Right Model
After comparing all the major home freeze dryers, I decided on the Medium Harvest Right. For our family of four, it hits the sweet spot between capacity and kitchen footprint. It can handle about 7-10 pounds of fresh food per batch, which translates to roughly 1.5-2.5 pounds of freeze dried product. (my model is linked in the picture above and HERE.)
The smaller models felt too limiting for batch processing garden harvests, while the large units would have dominated our kitchen. The medium size fits comfortably on our counter without overwhelming the space.
The Reality of Daily Use
Let me be honest about what living with a freeze dryer actually looks like, because the marketing materials don't always tell the full story.
The Good: The quality of preserved food is incredible. Those strawberries I mentioned? They're like nature's candy, intensely flavored and perfectly preserved. Vegetables maintain their color and nutrition better than any other preservation method I've tried. Complete meals freeze dry beautifully, making it easy to preserve leftovers or prepare emergency meals. My personal favorite thing I freeze dry is garlic powder, onion powder, and freeze dried ginger.
The process is largely hands-off once you understand your machine. Load the trays, start the cycle, and wait. Most cycles run 20-36 hours depending on the food, but the machine does all the work.
The Challenging: These machines are loud. Not just a little loud, but "conversation stopping" loud during certain phases. We do not have any other place in our home to put it other than our kitchen. It would be better suited for a laundry room or basement. Either way it should be in a room that is closed off from the rest of the house.
The time investment is significant. While the machine does the work, you're still looking at 24+ hours for most batches. Planning becomes important, especially during harvest season when you want to process food quickly.
Energy consumption is not noticeable to me. Our electric bill has gone done as we have made appliance replacements including our AC so I can’t tell because it all happened over the same period of time.
The Learning Curve: Different foods require different approaches. Berries are straightforward, but foods with high fat content or complex textures need experimentation. I've learned to fully pre freeze all the freeze drier runs to prevent them from running too long, and that some vegetables benefit from light blanching first like potatoes.
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What I Wish I'd Known Before Buying
Budget Beyond the Machine: Factor in ongoing costs like mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, jars, jar vacuum sealer, and increased electricity usage is possible. I also highly recommend buying the tops for the trays so you can stack them in the freezer, extra trays so you can have one set freezing while the other is in the freeze drier, and one tray set of the silicone mats. The mats are not do or die but they are very helpful for sticky items like bananas and mangos. Just makes clean up easier. All these items add up over time but are either necessary for proper long-term storage or easy of use. I cover all of the accessories I recommend HERE.
Plan Your Space: Consider both placement during operation and storage for finished products. We dedicated an entire pantry shelf to freeze dried goods, and they take up more space than you'd expect especially is you are using mylar bags. I have yet to find a good storage solution on how to put those on a shelf but I am working on it. After my kids have picked through it looks like a mess.
Start Simple: Don't try to freeze dry your most expensive ingredients first. Practice with affordable items while you learn your machine's quirks and timing. Start with fruits, work you way up to treats like ice cream sandwiches and move your way up to full meals.
Maintenance Matters: These machines require regular cleaning and occasional maintenance. The vacuum pump oil needs changing, and ice buildup requires defrosting between batches.
Temperature Sensitivity: Room temperature affects performance significantly. Our kitchen location keeps the machine running more efficiently than it would if we put it in our garage. But I have seen people run them in their garage too.
Is It Worth It?
For our family, absolutely. The ability to preserve peak-season produce with minimal nutrient loss has changed how we approach food storage. We're wasting less, eating better, and building a pantry of foods that actually taste good years later.
However, it's not for everyone. If you don't regularly preserve food, grow your own produce, or prioritize emergency preparedness, the investment might not make sense. The upfront cost is substantial, and you need to use it regularly to justify the expense.
For families who do preserve harvests, want better emergency food storage, or simply love the idea of having peak-season strawberries available year-round, it's been transformative. Just go in with realistic expectations about the learning curve, ongoing costs, and space requirements.
The best part? Opening a bag of freeze dried strawberries in February and tasting summer concentrated into each bite. For that alone, it's been worth every penny to me.
