hey guys retired at 40 I'm finally rolling out a freeze-dried video I know
I know it's been so long since I've done it
summers going by it so fast that I just the freeze drying has just gotten kind
of put back on the back burner so today's video I'm going to try and solve
a problem that I've been having with camping and rehydrating freeze-dried
stuff especially breakfast as we all know breads do not rehydrate well and
the thing that is kind of lacking in breakfast freeze-dried is pancakes so
today we're going to do some potato pancakes because of the potatoes I think
it's gonna rehydrate quite a bit better I'm gonna give you my homemade potato
pancake recipe and now we're gonna freeze dry it coming up so here's what
we need for our potato pancakes we need some flour some butter some oil I'm
using coconut oil we need some baking powder some pepper some salt a little
onion powder or onion salt if you want to a little bit of milk 2 eggs 3 to 4
russet potatoes depending on the size of the potato and some grated cheese so the
first thing we want to do is skin our potatoes grab yourself a mixing bowl and
then we're gonna put these after they're shredded we're gonna put them into the
mixing bowl
next we're gonna add a half a cup of milk and then we're gonna do two eggs
we're gonna mix this all together before we add our next ingredients so make sure
you get your egg blended up and everything evenly coated on this before
we add our next ingredients which is going to be 1 cup of flour then we need
1 total cup of cheese you can break it up into different types of cheeses you
can do half parmesan half cheddar I like to do all cheddar so as long as you have
one cup of cheese total you can also have bacon bits in at this time if you
want you need a quarter of a cup of bacon bits or something else if you
wanted to add something else next are the quick ingredients we're gonna do a
teaspoon of onion salt or onion powder we're gonna do a teaspoon of salt and
we're gonna do a teaspoon of baking powder and then we're gonna do a 1/2
teaspoon of black powder I said black powder but I meant black pepper although
I wouldn't recommend using black powder I'm sure it would be a blast and
probably an explosion of flavor if you try it make sure you shoot me a comment
so that's all of our ingredients we're gonna mix this up until we have a nice
even consistency and then if you have a big skillet or a griddle that would work
best for this but it can be done in a frying pan also it just takes a little
bit longer so we're gonna get a skillet or a
griddle or whatever you're using you want it on about medium heat and we're
gonna add some oil and some butter I'm actually using coconut oil because I
like a weight I like the taste that adds to everything and then for butter I use
avocado butter if you've never tried it you should actually give it a shot it
doesn't taste like fake butter it tastes exactly like butter but it's heart
healthy so just put a little dollop of butter on here and then add a little bit
of coconut oil and just kind of swish it around alright so we're gonna take a
little bit of our pancake mixture and you just need kind of a dollop on there
and then we want to spread it around as thin as we can get it without having
holes in it and we're just gonna let that hang out on medium and we also need
to be careful because we're using a lot of oil and we know since we're freeze
drying the oil doesn't always do that well with freeze drying so I think after
we're done cooking we probably want to Pat them off with a paper towel to
remove as much as the oil as we can or better yet we can just line the trays
with some paper towels and tell them off and then we can actually just leave the
paper towels down when we freeze dry and that should pretty much absorb the rest
of the oil
check on our potato pancakes and see oh we're coming along oh the oil is
starting to heat up now and we can't get a spatula under it but it's not totally
it's not totally ready so I think as as we cook these I think I'm actually going
to use less and less oil and see if we can get away with using very little oil
all right this one's good that side is more what you want I try a little bit
less oil on this one if in doubt go to low heat the other thing to think about
too is if you don't get them totally cooked right now you can actually cook
them again when you rehydrate them so that gets me thinking then maybe we
should try and freeze dry some raw potato pancakes and then try to try and
rehydrate them and cook them so let's do that all right here's my third attempt
there's almost no oil left in the pan and I'm gonna cook it really low and
slow I think it will freeze dry and it'll rehydrate a lot better all right I
just flipped it and it looks like low and slow is the way to go so really
interesting the third one was the one that had the least amount of oil and
only low heat and I cooked it very slow and it turned out the best out of all of
them so I think I have enough for one more pancake so I'm gonna do this one
low and slow also and it has almost no oil once again and if you follow this
recipe I think you'd have if you cooked all of the the pancakes I think you
would have enough to fill all four trays okay same thing this one turned out
really good low oil low heat cook it slow laughs Jack coming at you so these
are ready to go into the deep freeze and then I think one after they're frozen I
think that I'll probably switch out the paper towel once again whoa look at that
those are decent trays in there that's a good thing because we don't have a full
batch we only have two trays so I'll go ahead and throw these in with these
other ones and then I'll have a full batch to go well let these hang on
overnight and we'll come and check on them make sure and they're all ready to
go in the freezer hour in the morning all right so these have been sitting in
overnight I've got our cooked potato pancakes our
uncooked potato pancakes and then I'm going to
some refried beans just to fill the freeze dryer up so you'll have to excuse
my temporary setup here kind of crude it's out in the garage which is not an
ideal situation it's dusty and hot
but it'll have to do alright so our free freeze is all complete I selected three
frozen on the software I'm gonna hit start close the drain valve
and I left it on all default settings so we'll see how long this takes and I'll
catch you in a minute all right we're all wrapped up twenty eight hours and 55
minutes almost twenty nine hours so I'm feeling really really confident on how
these turned out if you remember in the campfire breakfast video that I did the
regular pancakes did not do well anything that's bread like does not
typically turn out very well and these turned out exactly how you want them to be
I think these will absolutely do fine these I'm still I have a little bit of
hesitation but let's just try it and find out all right so I'm gonna start
with the raw ones but we just need enough to make one pancake and I'm just
gonna soak them in a little bit of water and we'll keep it mixed up it'll take it
of a few minutes I'm guessing to absorb all that water and then we can throw
them into an oil pan and then for the cooked ones I think that the best way to
do this is just to put them in a pan with some water in it just a little bit
of water and go on really low heat and just kind of let the the pancake cook at
the same time that it's absorbing the water so I'm gonna take the one that's
the the least done this was actually the one that had the least oil in it so
here's our uncooked ones they actually are starting they're taking in the water
really well there's no more dryness to them so I'm gonna let them sit for a
little bit more and then I'm gonna give it a mix and throw it into an oil pan so
our cooked pancakes starting to heat up the water starting to heat up I'm hoping
that it's not gonna get doughy like bread typically does but I think if I
have to I can just kind of take the water out slowly and just rehydrate it
with more steam and just water vapor oils getting hot on here I'm gonna go
and the potato pancake that's uncooked
see it is good I like how it's gonna like how it's coming back I like how its
rehydrated I think it's gonna be exactly the way it was when we put it into the
freeze dryer so our cooked pancakes look it looks like it's getting a little bit
soft so I'm gonna go ahead and dump the water out and then just try and
rehydrate it in the water that it's already taken in I just flipped to the
uncooked potato pancake it's looking really good it's got that crisp on it
just like you want it it's just a little bit golden brown in the center I think
it's gonna do awesome the cooked one is starting to come back a little bit but I
think I'm gonna pull it off and I'm gonna heat I'm gonna heat some oil in
this pan and then I'm just gonna stick it back in there with the moisture it
has with some oil and then we're gonna see if that helps the raw one looks
really really good it looks perfect it looks exactly like you just made it it's
got that great crispness to it great golden-brown both sides the potatoes got
done just like they normally would confess and ask for a better end product
the cooked one we've been struggling a little bit with I think I might turn up
the heat just a little bit now since it's been going low and slow for a while
you just starting to firm up just a little bit not too bad it's a little bit
crisp I'd like him to be just a little bit softer but it's definitely edible I
think if you did it a couple more times you'd have no problem doing this just
fine well I think we solved the Pancake problem instead of doing buttermilk
style pancakes you just need to do potato pancakes if you had some ranch
dressing or you can add maple syrup just like you would regular pancakes or some
people do ketchup I think it's definitely a feasible option the
uncooked works a lot better than the cooked does but I think with a couple
tries I could get the cooked ones to do pretty darn good the uncooked ones are
definitely the winner though they turn out soft in the middle and crisp on the
outside exactly how you want them and they taste
just like they came off the grittle so if you're in the freeze drying or food
preservation or prepping or gardening or frugal living or any of the other things
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who actually enjoy this kind of content also feel free to shoot me a comment or
what your experience is with potato pancakes or buttermilk pancakes and I
always love hearing from the community in the meantime this is retired at 40
remember to live life simple I'll catch you next week