Freeze Dried Eggs

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5 from 3 votes

Freeze-dried eggs are a great way to preserve eggs for long-term storage, right on your pantry shelf.

Prep Time30

Cook Time1

Additional Time30

Total Time1 1

Author: Ashley Adamant

Ingredients

Whole Fresh Eggs

Instructions

Start by cracking and scrambling the eggs. Be sure that the eggs are thoroughly scrambled. A blender or immersion blender helps.
Pre-chill your freeze dryer and close the air vent at the back.
Insert the freeze dryer trays about 3/4 of the way into the freeze dryer, and then carefully pour the raw egg onto the tray. (This prevents the tray from tipping, resulting in spilled eggs. If you have silicone insert molds for your freeze dryer trays, as I do, you can fill those and pre-freeze them. Do not attempt to pre-freeze the eggs or other liquids directly on the trays, as they'll likely spill as they're moved around.)
Press start on the freeze dryer, and it will begin the cycle, first freezing the food, then creating a vacuum, and then finally freeze-drying the eggs.
When the cycle is complete, remove the eggs from the freeze dryer for storage.
Crushing the eggs into a powder before storage is optional, but recommended. They'll pack tighter into bags that way, and they rehydrate better if first crushed into a powder (rather than left as chunks).
For short-term storage, store in an air-tight container such as a mason jar. For long-term storage, use mylar bags with oxygen absorbers.

Notes

Yield

We have a large freeze dryer, and each tray can hold about 18 to 20 eggs. The machine has 5 trays, so that means a full batch is around 90 to 100 eggs. My total yield was 3 quarts of freeze-dried egg powder.

Yield will vary based on the size of your freeze dryer.

Small Model - 24 to 36 eggs
Medium Model - 45 to 50 eggs
Large Model - 90 to 100 eggs
Extra Large Model - 200 to 250 eggs

Once freeze-dried, it takes about 8 to 9 eggs to make a cup of freeze-dried egg powder, or about 32 to 36 eggs to make a quart of freeze-dried egg powder.

Freeze Dried Scrambled Eggs (Cooked)

You can freeze dry cooked scrambled eggs, and that works just fine. They cannot be used for baking, of course, but they make a lovely camping meal breakfast. All you have to do is pour boiling water on top of them and allow them to rehydrate. You can basically make your own mountain house meals this way, and for a lot less money.

To do that, just scramble the eggs and cook them in a pan before placing them on the freeze-dryer trays. I like to scramble mine until they're just barely done, as they're going to get cooked ever so slightly more when you rehydrate them with boiling water. I use about a tablespoon of butter for every three eggs too, and it adds extra buttery richness (but isn't so much that they won't freeze dry nicely).

Since the eggs are pre-cooked, they won't slip under parchment or silicone mats, so I use silicone mats under these to make cleanup easier.

You can fit about a dozen cooked scrambled eggs on a single large freeze-dryer tray.