Can anyone please confirm for me whether food that has been dehydrated with honey, syrup or citric acid (which I understand has a shorter life span than those made with preservatives which cause allergic reactions) can be kept fresh longer by vacuum sealing and then freezing. Also if this is true can you please guide me to a website where I can get info on the "shelf-life" of the various items such as fruit, vegetables. I am very allergic so fresh fruits and vegetables are my main source of food. I have a vacuum sealer and a food dehydrator and would like to make the most of bulk buying. 🙂 Thank you
Preserving dehydrated foods prepared with citric acid, honey or syrup
dehydratingfreezing
Related Solutions
You get mold (and less visibly, bacteria) growth after 4-5 days because your water (humidity) content left in the deyhdrated food is greater than 5%. Typically dried apples (and other types of fiberous dried fruit) have humidity levels closer to 20% when you don't dry them to a crisp. That means the treats you make aren't shelf stable, but luckily this can be fixed with some experimentation.
Each food has it's own requirements for preservation. Here are some quick guidelines to try out on apples. For yams and bananas, I would try dehydrating them a bit more closer to being crisps.
Steps:
Wash fruits thoroughly before dehydrating. I don't do this, but you could try using a "fruit wash" (product for washing fruit).
Dehydrating isn't sterilization - the dehydrator isn't hot enough to sterilize the food, so some of these 'nasties' are left on there and waiting for their chance to grow. Commercial-grade food is always sterilized. Because a dehydrater isn't sealed well, I suggest you nuke the treats in your oven for 5-10 minutes on high heat AFTER you dehydrate the stuff, experimenting to make sure you don't dry them out too much in the oven. Also, be careful because the sugar is concentrated in dehydrated fruit, so it will burn easily. Wrapping the fruit in tin-foil before placing it in your oven is a potential trick because this effectively sterilizes the fruit in a steam bath. If you use foil, you'll need to cook them longer - start with 15 minutes.
After the treats are dehydrated and sterilized, try storing them in air-tight containers and always away from light in a cool/dark place. They need 7-10 days to "equilize" the moisture between each dried piece of fruit. Make sure to shake the containers every once in a while so they don't all stick together.
BEYOND THIS, there are more advanced techniques that you can easily try - including conditioning the dried fruits and a number of fruit-baths that preserve the fruits with harmless chemical solutions, like Ascorbic Acid (vitamin C). Try reading more on this link from UC Davis:
http://homeorchard.ucdavis.edu/8229.pdf
(Start Reading on Page 7).
Throw them away. I would not expect potatoes to go black in the dehydration process, and although they may be safe to eat I would not expect them to be palatable, or inviting in any way. You cannot be sure they aren't toxic, and you wouldn't put them on a guest's plate, so chuck them.
Best Answer
Using a vacuum sealer before freezing should generally improve lifetime in the freezer. Note that this lifetime is all about quality; safety-wise, everything lasts forever in the freezer.
When food is frozen, the main thing that keeps it from lasting forever is interaction with the air, and it only reduces quality. As time goes on, water and flavors escape from the food, flavors from the freezer enter the food, and frost accumulates on the surface. (In the case of dehydrated food, water entering the food might actually be a problem.) If the food has been vacuum-sealed first, then there's no way for any of this to happen. This is why you can find things like individually vacuum-sealed frozen fish fillets - the quality is much better. So if your vacuum-sealing is good, your food should hopefully last as long as you want it to in the freezer.