Best Affordable Home Freeze Dryer On The Market Today (Harvest Right Review) | Better Home + Living (2023)

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The Harvest Right Freeze Dryer is one of the most intelligent freeze dryer units you will ever find on the market.

It is fully automated and does everything entirely on its own the moment you lock up its plexiglass door and press start.

Related: What’s the difference between a Freeze Dryer and Dehydration?

Related: Why Are Freeze Dryers So Expensive?

It will alert you the moment its sensors detect that your food has been completely dried.

There are many methods of food preservation. Heck, the number of freeze dryer brands on the market is also steadily increasing. However, you are very unlikely to find a method of preservation or a freeze dryer that preserves food as brilliantly as this one.

It is built to work faster, to preserve more food at once, to last long, and to dry food completely for true long term preservation.

We love it because it can help users to save a lot of money. More on this in a bit.

It is also perfect for creating delicious, lightweight, and nutritious meals and snacks for camping trips, hiking, backpacking, mountaineering, and so on.

Families, preppers, and survivalists will also find it useful for preserving nutritious food for emergency situations.

A Bit About the Manufacturer

The company behind this freeze dryer is the Utah-based Harvest Right Company. Many freeze dryers companies are based in Utah serving the large prepper community in the state. But unlike the other ones, Harvest Right is the industry leader.

The Company engineers and hand assembles all its home freeze dryers in the state. And it has been doing so for many years now. Compared to freeze dryers from other brands, Harvest Right dryers are more stylish, innovative and durable.

Key Features of the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer

• Daily freeze drying output: 7 to 10 pounds of food
• Yearly freeze drying output: 312 gallons
• Freeze Dryer dimensions: 28.5 H by 21.25 D by 18 W (inches)
• External oil vacuum pump weight: 35 pounds
• Power: 110V

What is Included in the Package:

• A Harvest Right Freeze Dryer (medium size)
• A vacuum pump
• Pump oil
• A pump oil filter
• A guide to the freeze drying process
• Four stainless steel food trays
• 50 Mylar bags
• 50 oxygen absorbers
• An impulse sealer

What We Love About This Harvest Right Freeze Dryer

Its Technology

The technology used to make this Harvest Right Freeze Dryer is pretty impressive. This is because it has been improved over the years by the manufacturer probably in response to user feedback.

How has the technology been improved? In a couple of ways, actually. For example, the freeze drying process is now much faster than before. This is thanks to the better insulation materials used and the improvement of the machine’s compressor. Changes that have significantly reduced the freezing time.

The machine will do the freezing and drying on its own and alert you when your food is ready for packaging.

The technology has also been improved to completely automate the freeze drying process. You now only have to prepare food, lay it on the trays, slide the trays into the dryer, and press start.

The machine will do the freezing and drying on its own and alert you when your food is ready for packaging. It does this with the help of sensors and an information processing unit.

In other words, you do not have to be concerned about your food freezing too much or drying too much. The machine will monitor everything for you and shut itself down when the freeze-drying cycle is complete.

Another technological improvement is in the machine’s control panel. The machine is now controlled using a touchscreen panel through which you can customize it to correctly freeze dry your food.

What we like even more about the improved technology used is that it has not affected the price of the unit. In fact, the price of this unit has actually been going down over the years. Around two or three years ago, the unit used to cost about $1,000 bucks more than the current price.

Its Design

This freezer dryer machine is hand-assembled in America using top quality materials.

The materials include its stainless steel body, its thick (0.75-inch) plexiglass door, and thick internal insulation. The use of steel and plexiglass ensure the durability of the machine, while the thick insulation enables the machine to achieve freezing temperatures as low as negative 40 degrees F.

The body of the machine includes inbuilt sensors that help the machine to work as brilliantly as it does. The sensors and the frame of the machine are complemented by its stylish and attractive finish and by its touchscreen control.

The Fact That it Makes Nutritious and Long-Lasting Food

This freeze dryer preserves food gently without destroying the shape or the nutrients in it. This is because it does not utilize direct heat to dry and preserve food. For this reason, nearly all nutrients present in the fresh food are found in freeze-dried food.

This is unlike other preservation methods such as dehydration and freezing that may result in the loss of 30% or more nutrients. So if you want to preserve whatever food with all its nutrients, you should get a freeze dryer.

Moreover, when you freeze dry food and properly store it in Mylar bags, you can expect it to last for up to 25 years. Imagine that. Impressive, right? You can do all that with the help of this Harvest Right Freeze Dryer.

Its3-Year Warranty and Excellent Customer Support Service

The Harvest Right Company has a 3-year warranty on all its freeze dryers.

Because its freeze dryers are pretty costly, the three-year warranty is definitely deserved. Not many freeze dryer companies offer such long warranties.

It is not as if the extended warranty is really needed for this Harvest Right dryer because it is built to last for a long time. If you use it well and properly maintain it, you are unlikely to damage or spoil it. It can serve you and your family for many years.Nevertheless, the machine comes with the extended warranty and it allows you to have it checked and repaired free of charge.

And in case you need your freeze dryer repaired or you need to help operating or to maintain your unit, you can simply contact the company’s customer service department. According to many reviews, they provide excellent customer support service.They are also known to be very professional.

Its Variety of Applications

You can use this freeze dryer to prepare food for emergency situations for yourself and for your family. You can also use it to preserve fresh foods and even leftovers to reduce wastage. This freeze dryer is perfect for food storage because it retains nearly all the original nutrients unlike dehydrating, canning, and freezing.

You can also use this freeze dryer to preserve excess food from your garden or farm for years. If you are tired of throwing away leftovers, you can use it to store them for future consumption.

With this dryer, you can also almost literally eat anything you want, when you want. No need to worry about the availability of that food on the market or if it is in season. Simply buy what you want to eat in bulk and freeze dry it and you will always have it available.

You can also use it to preserve lightweight, healthy, and delicious food and snacks for outdoors and for pets.

The Fact That it Can Help Users to Save a Lot of Money

This will probably surprise many people because freeze dryers are generally expensive. However, they can help you to save a lot of money in the long run.

For example, it has been estimated that a household of four in the United States wastes as much as $2,300 worth of food every year. By getting a freezer dryer, a family can preserve its leftovers to prevent food from going to waste. It can also preserve food bought in bulk to provide cost savings.

For example, as mentioned in the key details section above, this freeze dryer is capable of freeze drying about 300 gallons of food (around three hundred #10 cans) in a year. If making every can of freeze-dried food on your own instead of buying it is saving you only $20 (a very conservative estimate by the way), making 300 cans of dried food would save you $6,000.

And even when you account for the increase in electricity cost, the savings are still significant.

Here is a more practical example of how this freeze dryer can help you save money. Buying 60 eggs, freeze drying them, and putting them in the right packages, is going to cost you around $15. In contrast, buying the same number of freeze-dried eggs would naturally cost more than $60.

So freeze drying can help you save a lot of money.

What We Didn’t Love About the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer

The Unit is a Bit Noisy

This freeze dryer is noisy. It doesn’t sound like a jackhammer but the sound it makes especially in the drying part of the preservation cycle is clearly audible. It sounds like a powerful vacuum cleaner set on its maximum suction force.

The Unit Still Takes a While to Freeze Dry Food

We said we liked the fact that this machine’s technology has improved to reduce drying time. However, it still typically takes a lot of time to freeze dry food. The minimum time is between 20 to 24 hours. The good thing is that you do not have to sit around to watch the food drying.

It Takes a Bit of Time to Get Used To It

There is a bit of a learning curve with this machine. It takes a while to figure out how best to freeze dry different types of food and how to quickly maintain it. No part is extremely difficult to master, you just need a bit of time to learn how to do everything correctly. The same with other methods of long term food preservation e.g. canning, fermenting, and freezing.

Our Verdict

This post has highlighted the potential of freeze dryers to revolutionize the food industry and emergency preparations. With a proper freeze dryer like the one reviewed above, you can store excess food and even leftovers to prevent wastage.

You can also preserve nutritious food for different types of emergencies including financial ones.

We were a bit skeptical about freeze dryers when we were doing the research for this post. We thought the average price was too much and that the machine was just a novelty item for survivalists and doomsday preppers.

However, we discovered that the freeze dryers just are becoming increasingly popular across the country.

Individuals and families are buying them to preserve and store their own food for emergencies. Others are buying them to save money spent on food by preserving food bought in bulk and leftovers.

So if you can afford to get a freeze dryer like the Harvest Right one reviewed here, it’s worth every penny spent.

You will find out it is a very worthy investment in the long run.