There’s a common saying that people ‘eat with their eyes’ meaning that before someone has even tasted a dish they’ve decided if it will appeal to them or not purely based on how it looks.
Most dishes need to have some sort of wow factor, from how they look on a plate to how certain ingredients change when they’re cooked.
Using freeze-dried ingredients in certain recipes can be a massive help in making sure a meal looks and tastes its absolute best. But what are the other benefits to using freeze-dried ingredients over fresh?
Uniform Look
If you’re baking something, say a batch of cakes for instance, you want them to look uniform and of a similar quality. It’s much like in a professional kitchen where everything that goes out to a diner needs to be portioned correctly and have the same level of quality and look when it goes out the door.
Freeze-dried ingredients are frequently uniform in their sizes and are therefore frequently easier to work with than fresher ingredients. For instance, if you make a batch of blueberry muffins using fresh fruit you are much more likely to end up with a soggier mix and muffins that are stained by the juice bleeding out of the fruit as they bake.
This can stop them being as visually appealing. Freeze-dried fruit as a substitute contains less moisture, giving you a much more consistent amount of control over the consistency of your muffin mix. There’s also much less staining during baking, meaning your muffins retain a lovely golden colour, which is much more visually pleasing.
Long Lasting
Freeze-dried ingredients are a great way to keep ingredient costs down. You can buy and keep freeze-dried fruit and other ingredients for much longer than fresh produce.
This means you can have constant access to ingredients without a noticeable dip in quality and also means you are buying less ingredients due to the lengthier shelf life. This can often mean that freeze-dried ingredients are a much more cost-effective option, perfect if you run a catering business or restaurant or simply need to manage a food budget more carefully.
If you do a lot of cooking and baking that involves seasonal ingredients, having freeze-dried ingredients is often a good idea to help make sure you still have access to your favourite recipes, even if some of the ingredients you need are currently unavailable. For example, freeze-dried tomatoes or olives. These could be a fantastic option to include in your bread baking during the colder months. This can help you create a delicious accompaniment to warming winter soup for example.
A Great Finishing Touch
Freeze dried ingredients allow for flavours to be presented in different ways. For example, companies like Lio Licious provide powdered fruits. Essentially berries that have been freeze dried then ground into a powder.
While a powder is a great way to add colour or taste to recipes like smoothies or cakes it also makes a fantastic finishing touch to other dishes.
Think about the garnishes that go along with meals, particularly desserts. A quick dusting of a fruit powder can provide a fantastic final flourish to a dish, making it look more professional and adding an extra burst of flavour.
This is a great way to elevate your cooking and really wow the guests at a dinner party or maybe even help mask any mistakes you’ve made when decorating a cake.
Freeze-dried ingredients can be incredibly versatile, allowing you a greater degree of flexibility and control over what you cook and can be a quick and simple way of adding extra flavour to your favourite dishes.
They are a great way to experiment and ensure you have access to a pantry of different ingredients that can help you to create a range of new and exciting recipes.
*collaborative post
