What is Freeze Drying?
Freeze drying is an ultra modern, ultra cool, food preservation process in which food (or candy, which is food right?) is carefully placed in one of That Sweet Couple's special freeze drying machines. The door is sealed and the 'Start' button is pressed and the magic begins.
First, the temperature in the chamber is lowered to -10 degrees. Brrrr, that's downright Arctic. Once the food/candy is completely frozen, a vacuum pump is activated automagically and all of the air is removed from the chamber, creating.... you guessed it...a frozen vacuum.
Next, a heater is activated so that the food/candy is being warmed and frozen at the same time! Normally, if frozen food/candy is reheated it will melt (picture putting an ice cube in a hot pan...it will quickly return to a liquid water state right?) but since we have a frozen vacuum no melting occurs. Instead a cool process called 'sublimation' takes place
During sublimation, water molecules don't melt (they can't in a vacuum) but instead they turn directly to water vapor...that's right...they float out of the food and out to the super cold frozen surface of the stainless steel vacuum chamber and build up as ice there. This super neat process continues for anywhere from 4 to 16 hours for candy up to 48 hours or more for food. Think about it, there's a lot more water molecules in food like delicious pickles or zucchini than there is in candy so it takes a lot longer for all that water to 'float' out or sublimate.
Once the process is complete the vacuum chamber is opened up and the fantastic food/candy is placed into containers to maintain freshness then into our special mylar bags and brought to you, our Customer, our favorite folks!
We let the ice melt and clean the machine before the next batch is prepared and that's how we do it.
Please come see us or contact us at thatsweetcouple@yahoo.com or send us a Facebook message today!
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Big News! We're Moving!
We've had our eye on this new property for a few months and finally things worked out and we were able to acquire it. We closed on December 19th! Not the best timing but that's the way things lined up.
To say we have been busy is a colossal understatement. Between creating delicious candy, fruits, vegetables and treats for our wonderful Customers, working out the deal and moving equipment etc to the new property and spending Christmas with our wonderful Family we haven't had many minutes to spare but we are super blessed and so thankful!
One of the many things that attracted us to the new property is that it's a 2 acre lot and has a large, free standing, building that we plan to convert to a pristine, super well equipped, commercial kitchen so we can expand our capacity and offer so many more wonderful products for you, our Customers! It's large enough for that equipment in part of it and a shipping center so we can more effectively ship our products.
Stay Tuned as the adventure continues!