How to Freeze Dry Cheese?

You live for cheese. You die for cheese. You’ll die. You’d rather walk through the heart of darkness barefoot than die a cheese-less death, actually. Oh, you get the idea. If you get trapped inside and stranded, it will be a cheese-less (see how that works? Dis-trap) walk to the heart of darkness, barefoot. And you like all kinds of cheeses: cheddars, mozzarellas, brie, jacks (Ah, the candy-apple jacks!), cream cheese and even, strangely (but then again, do you really find anything surprising about me?) bleu cheese (Baaa!). Your family loves cheeses. In addition to being heavenly, cheeses are part of your food storage.

Why do we do it? In addition to the fact that it is more delicious than I can adequately articulate (CHEESE IS REALLY F%!NG DELICIOUS, GUYS) it is also a nice calorie-dense food source, and that whole ‘freeze drying’ thing means that it is going to last you even longer-term. You get to re-hydrate the cheese and slather it all over your re-hydrated burrito! Cheese from awesome, happy cows, slathered all over 100 of your freeze dried burritos, 80 of your dry veggies or, hell, maybe your re-hydrated omelets. Are you drooling yet? Let’s get cheesy!

What on Earth is Freeze Dried Cheese?

Short answer: sprinkle on heaven! Long answer: freeze dried cheese. That’s cheese that the lyophilisation gun has taken all the water out of. Most top quality cheeses will freeze well for about six months – much less in the fridge. That’s great if your shorter shelf life is down to slovenly cheese-eating, but we real-deal cheeseballs turn over faster than that. Enter cheese as powder. Ta da!

How Long Can We Expect Freeze Dried Cheese to Last?

All right, okay. Sorta, kind like a Energizer bunny of cheese, it just keeps going and going. Five years after we wrote an enthused piece about shovelling the freeze-dried cheese down our faces, it was still going.Disclaimer, again: the shelf-life is still dependent upon the type of cheese, the climate it’s stored in, whether it was prepped properly, and how long it’s already been hanging around. But still; years! Years, people! Don’t you just love it when milking a goat, literally, comes full circle?

Preparing Your Cheese for the Big Freeze

What shape will that cheese you’ve freeze dried take? Shredded is your best friend, so grate your own and you can garnish your favourite freeze dried burritos, veggies or omelette. Cubes are also good, for snacking – presumably this is what you’re going for? Who doesn’t love a cheese cube?

All you need to do is cube or shred your sample, spread it out in your trays and leave the machine to do its work… By way of completeness (the process alone was real) here’s your standard cubes of powdered shredded cheddar, all packaged and ready for freeze drying. Would still go well, I feel, with a sauvignon blanc.

How Much Cheese Can You Freeze Dry at Once?

Card-carrying cheese-a-holics are likely asking ‘This freeze dryer thingy is cool but how much damn cheese can I get in it?!’ You have a point. Just go easy on the ratios: with a medium sized rotary dryer forecasting 1-3 lbs can fit into a tray. Don’t stuff these trays like a Thanksgiving bird just even out all around.

How Do You Know Your Cheese is Done Freeze Drying?

You can tell almost certainly that it’s brick-able when it looks like it took a vacation to the Sahara and is crusted and dry like the Sahara. Driver opens the wine. Sharp cheddar cubes become marbled Monterey Jack cubes. Driver opens the wine.

What Kind of Cheese Can You Freeze Dry?

And this is where it gets interesting. For the same reason you can also freeze dry (or dry age) cream cheese, or sour cream or cottage cheese. Do you think you can freeze dry cream cheese? You betcha! All of this is wonderfully successful as a freeze-dried product.

But this works for cream-based cheeses too: you can toss your bulk food store’s pre-shredded cheese in there no problem, or – if you want to take it seriously and show off in the kitchen a bit – grab yourself an actual chunk of cheese and shred or cube it. The best-tasting, best-textured cheese on this planet? We are telling you now: it’s the stuff you make yourself. Shredded, frozen-dried cheese is better. We’d buy Tillamook.

I know I could go back there to get it. There’s a cheese I liked. Another one. Okay, Fiesta cheese mix. That shit tore ass in the freeze-dryer. That shit, you crushed the shit right down. It would get into a small little mass and you could stupidly, with an FSK vacuum sealer, put a whole tray of that shit (I don’t know what they’re calls – the plastic tray that has the cheese tocbraided all over it, the pre-shredded thing). That shit I would’. You’d put the whole tray in this, what is it called? A mylar bag. Nothing spills in there. You could put it in one quart and still have some room left over. That’s saying something. You had more room in your fucking bags. Literally more room – go do the thing.

How to Freeze Dry Cheese?

You might be thinking: OK, so you have to use culinary-grade freeze-driers at home, or you need some big, expensive, private label equipment. Not so fast. Freeze-drying at home has never been easier, thanks to inexpensive home freeze-drying machines, such as those made by Harvest Right. All you have to do is prep the food. The rest? The machine handled that. Freeze. Dry. Done. Put it in a bag.

Here i will discussed about how is the process . First of all you will need to let your trays filled with your cheese to be frozen in -41 degrees (or below) for about 10 hrs . After that your frozen cheese will be under a vacuum by a pump and drying will begin .
. Heat and Cool the trays by that machine to help your frozen cheese to take out the water as vapour by drying phenomenon . That vacuum will pull the moisture to the drum as ice my cheese is freeze dried ready to be packed.

What Settings Should You Use to Freeze Dry Cheese?

No matter how massive your Harvest Right vacuum sealer might be, the ‘big’ switches are set the same way. Put your trays into the drum; put the lid on top; lock the lid, and hit START -> CONTINUE on the computer’s touchscreen. Then sit back, and wait for the magic.

Questions You've Been Dying to Ask About Freeze Drying Cheese

Just how much of the stuff does the block of cheese have to sit in?

I must confess, it actually depends on some factors – humidity and which cheese you are dealing with – but roughly 36 hours.

How do you store freeze dried cheese?

I would have gotten them in mylar bags if you had said you needed it, but that’ll be fine in the mason jars if it’s properly dried. If your meat and cheese are going to keep well in a Zip-Loc, that’ll work well. It’ll hold that cheese if it’s completely dried, in an airtight, lightless, O2-absorbing type of a container.

Or how do you rehydrate freeze dried cheese?

There are dozens of ways. What I’ve had the most success with is just popping it in your food (eating directly-sourced cheese can be brutal to the stomach) and some other ingredients providing moisture to hydrate it. Pop it in lasagne. Pop it in omelettes. Pop it in soup. Pop it in casseroles. Pop it in … well you get the gist of it.

Thus you are ready! happy rapture, rapture plus, happy rapture, plus, rapture, rapture, rapture, rapture: happy rapture! Activate your terrific cheese freeze-dryer, put on your apron, chose your favourite cheddar block or mozzarella, and off you go! Would you be ready for something else? Yes, yes, of course. Freeze-dried shredded cheese, freeze dried cheese powder, freeze dried cheese cubes, freeze dried cheese kosher style, freeze dried cheese blocks, freeze dried aged cheese, freeze dried cheese ball made by flattening a ball of frozen cheese, freeze dried cheddar, freeze dried Gouda, freeze dried cream cheese? You will run out of cheese. Yep, you’ll run out of cheese all right. No way there is more!

Is freeze dried cheese a decent substitute for the real thing? I can tell you this: freeze dried cheese is tasty, plain and simple, and it’s fantastic as a snack in its own right. When that time between lunch and dinner hits and hunger pangs creep in, the cheesy bits are right there for the picking. Prepared cheese cubes are the quickest way to make a snack, and you can do it, too – prepare to have your mind blown as a chef! Um… just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Secret's in the Cheese

What is more is that when you rehydrate it, it makes everything taste better. Everything! You know what tastes fabulous? Freeze dried cheese. It lasts much longer than cheese does, so that’s good, but all the flavour and nutrition and everything you find in cheese is still there.

and now, since you’re asking, ‘can you freeze dry cheese?’ I’m so happy. ’cause the next time you make a burrito or omelette, try a pinch of your freeze dried cheese. and a smile in the mirror might just turn to a gleam. it’s not enough that it’s cheese, it’s the magic of freeze dried, it’s the magic of freeze dried portion controlled cheese and that, my cheese loving friend, is priceless.

The cheese itself laudered as much you as it about the cheese: a maven cheese-lover’s scrapbook, a relational satisfaction anticipation that allowed you to reach back through time and say: I shall never again be without Cheddar, protecting me from an epic snowstorm or the rising of the undead at the storefront next door.

Hoorah! Go get some of that cheese and freeze dry! Every cube, shred little cheese treasure trove to someone else?’ (Except perhaps a fellow cheesehead, because we’re all about that cheeselife.)