At Firepot we have opted for dehydration because we find it creates food that tastes like it should, with plenty of texture and flavour. It is an altogether slower and gentler process than freeze-drying.
When an ingredient is freeze-dried, it keeps the same shape and colour despite the rigorous temperature changes. If you have tried the berries in many breakfast cereals, you may know that these can break down into powder when rehydrated. This is due to the aggressive nature of freeze-drying.
Dehydration, on the other hand, is gentler. As the moisture evaporates, our food shrinks down, and then regains its original form as water is added. Warm air has no adverse effects on the cell structure of our ingredients, meaning that the texture of the food is the same as it was before it was dried.
The other major difference between our dehydrated meals and the majority of our freeze-dried competitors' food is the fact that we actually cook our ingredients. We prepare our meals by hand, using fresh ingredients and then dry each meal. Other companies buy in freeze-dried ingredients which they then mix together in the packet, hoping the flavours will combine by the time you add water — they don’t.