[ActionJackson]

Milk has been freeze-dried, but the result is very expensive compared to conventional drying because of the high use and therefore cost of the electricity needed to freeze-dry something that is mostly water.

Butter, like all high-fat foods, isn't going to freeze-dry successfully, and ghee is already essentially completely "dry," so no matter how cold you get it and how much vacuum you apply, you're just going to make deep-frozen and then defrosted clarified butter/ghee. No point in trying to take the water out of something that is already 99.9% water-free. Freeze-dried ghee would be a marketing gimmick equal to dehydrated water, just for the opposite reason.

Good info. Thanks. I do see powdered butter for sale. I wonder what the process is to bring butter to powdered form unless it's some sort of faux butter.

 

[Major Mjolnir]

Good info. Thanks. I do see powdered butter for sale. I wonder what the process is to bring butter to powdered form unless it's some sort of faux butter.

Essentially they add dried milk solids back to the butter fat until you get a powder - probably more complicated than that but you get the picture.

 

[NY Min]

Check the ingredient list. First item is usually nonfat milk solids (powdered milk). They use that to keep the butterfat a powder, similar to turning any oil into a powder by using maltodextrin modified starch, usually tapioca maltodextrin. (Shortening powder is made with maltodextrin instead of milk powder.) Basically they're doing the same trick I use when turning nonfat milk powder into whole milk powder.

Then you'll see butter itself, actually the butterfat/ghee part of butter without the water, followed by sodium caseinate (milk protein to soak up more of the fat without adding more milk sugar and milk taste from powdered milk) and disodium phosphate (an anticaking agent to keep it more powderlike). Some brands will use all powdered milk or even add a little buttermilk powder if they are trying to imitate cultured butter.
My homemade whole milk powder is more "clumpy" in the canister than commercial stuff because it's just butterfat and powdered milk, although it dissolves in water as fast as any commercial instant whole milk.

Depending on the brand, you will then see a reasonably safe antioxidant such as vitamin C and rosemary extract (more expensive and therefore less common) or toxic BHT, BHA, or TBHQ. The stuff reconstitutes into a spread that tastes like milky butter and can be added to dry baking mixes in place of butter with appropriate recipe adjustments for the powdered milk/casein, but is not going to cream up with sugar like real butter would when baking from scratch or fry things like real butter.

Buy canned butter and nonfat milk powder and have real whole milk and real butter in your longterm storage. Makes more sense than learning all sorts of tricks to make powdered "butter" act more or less like the real thing or feeding your kids tons of coconut oil artificial chemical creamer and sugar. Why do that when you can store the real things in the pantry for a decade instead?

 

[MikeK]

Good info. Thanks. I do see powdered butter for sale. I wonder what the process is to bring butter to powdered form unless it's some sort of faux butter.

They use maltodextrin. Same as they do with powdered margerine too. The fat absorbs into it and it turns into a powder. But it's not actually dried butter, because you can't dry an oil.

 

[ActionJackson]

They use maltodextrin. Same as they do with powdered margerine too. The fat absorbs into it and it turns into a powder. But it's not actually dried butter, because you can't dry an oil.

Okay. Thanks. That's even better information because I try to avoid maltodextrin when possible. So in its natural state ... butter simply has a fairly short shelf life, I take it.

 

[ActionJackson]

I have an idea I might try when I get my freeze dryer. I use a lot of Nutritional Yeast in my foods. It's a powder high in the vitamin B complex. I wonder what would happen if I saturated it with ghee then attempted to freeze dry it. ??? I guess it's an experiment worth trying. If I fail ... I fail.

 

[NY Min]

I have an idea I might try when I get my freeze dryer. I use a lot of Nutritional Yeast in my foods. It's a powder high in the vitamin B complex. I wonder what would happen if I saturated it with ghee then attempted to freeze dry it. ??? I guess it's an experiment worth trying. If I fail ... I fail.

You'd get nutritional yeast saturated with butterfat that had been deep frozen and defrosted and was rather clumpy stuff with a weird flavor for yeast and a weirder flavor for butter....because neither ingredient contains any water, that's all that would happen. It would basically be a waste of electricity. If you want butterfat-saturated yeast, just stir some ghee into the yeast.

Freeze-drying is not some magical universal preservative. It removes almost all the water content of a food while preserving it's original shape and size (versus dehydrating, which collapses it into a smaller volume that is different-textured from defrosted frozen food, much denser and therefore harder ro rehydrate completely.

If something is almost all water, freeze-drying will be economically impractical although it may eventually dry the stuff down to just its solid components. If something has no or almost no water, freeze-drying is pointless and will do nothing to extend shelf life because there was already no active water content to fuel hydrolytic chemical reactions or support spoilage organisms.

 

[ActionJackson]

You'd get nutritional yeast saturated with butterfat that had been deep frozen and defrosted and was rather clumpy stuff with a weird flavor for yeast and a weirder flavor for butter....because neither ingredient contains any water, that's all that would happen. It would basically be a waste of electricity. If you want butterfat-saturated yeast, just stir some ghee into the yeast.

Freeze-drying is not some magical universal preservative. It removes almost all the water content of a food while preserving it's original shape and size (versus dehydrating, which collapses it into a smaller volume that is different-textured from defrosted frozen food and therefore harder ro rehydrate completely.

If something is almost all water, freeze-drying will be economically impractical although it may eventually dry the stuff down to just its solid components. If something has no or almost no water, freeze-drying is pointless and will do nothing to extend shelf life because there was already no active water content to fuel hydrolytic chemical reactions or support spoilage organisms.

More useful information!!

Nutritional Yeast is something I use routinely. It's a lot different than standard yeast that might be used in baking bread. I really enjoy the flavor and the nutritional value. I'm also a big fan of butter. It's probably wishful thinking but it would be nice to find a way to prolong the shelf life of butter. I avoid Maltodextrin like the plague so (based on MikeM's earlier comment) it's not likely that I'll buy anymore powdered butter (I do have a couple of #5 cans in storage). Could be that I'll just have to do without (should a full-on SHTF happen in my life time).

 

[NY Min]

Red Feather canned butter—shelf life 10 years here without AC in the house.
Shorter term, your freezer is more economical if you have freezer space. Butter freezes well.

And although I avoid butter powder because the milk and protein powders really make it a different animal from real butter plus I buy nothing preserved with BHT/BHA/TBHQ, I haven't seen butter powder made with maltodextrin. Some may be, but most use milk and casein powders for butter powder. (And there was at least one brand last I looked that was using some combo of vitamin C/E/rosemary extract antioxidants to prevent rancidity rather than one of the toxic chemical antioxidants.)

Shortening powders are where they use maltodextrin, and you'll also find it in many mixes that contain fat/oil. It makes a powder out of any such when used in sufficient quantity.

ETA: I keep a big canister of nutritional yeast in the pantry too. Good for adding umami and good for adding B vitamins that last fairly well on the shelf. Scoop of brewer's yeast and scoop of pumpkin powder usually both go into any beans I'm cooking.

 

[MikeK]

I have an idea I might try when I get my freeze dryer. I use a lot of Nutritional Yeast in my foods. It's a powder high in the vitamin B complex. I wonder what would happen if I saturated it with ghee then attempted to freeze dry it. ??? I guess it's an experiment worth trying. If I fail ... I fail.

Drying only removes water. You can't dry oil. All you can do is absorb it in something to make it resemble powder. But it's still oil. It'll still go rancid just as fast, etc. Hence why they use antioxidants and O2 absorbers. You can buy canned butter. It's just pure butter that has a fair shelf life. The canned cheese is also worth considering. Although you can freeze dry that and store with an O2 absorber for a fair amount of shelf life.

 

[NY Min]

The canned cheese is also worth considering. Although you can freeze dry that and store with an O2 absorber for a fair amount of shelf life.

I much prefer freeze-dried real cheese to processed cheese in or out of a can, and that's definitely worth using your freeze-drier for because freeze-dried cheeses are expensive to buy

 

[Eddie_T]

All this ghee talk has whetted my appetite. My wife made the world's best yeast rolls using milk, egg and a recipe that had two risings before forming the Parker House rolls. While hot she buttered every roll. Eating them later the congealed butter had a ghee like texture. I am going to make some ghee and see if it keeps better in my water seal butter keeper.

 

[NY Min]

There was a time when all yeast breads were made with two risings in the bowl and one more after shaping. You get better, healthier bread that way, but these days home cooks seem to have followed in the footsteps of the commercial bakeries in trying to shorten the time needed from flour to loaf as much as possible with fast-rise yeasts, dough conditioners to speed things up, and single-rise bread machines. You can certainly make bread with a single fast rise, but you are giving up much of the magic the yeast works by reducing the phytates in wheat to make the minerals more available, increasing the lysine content to make a more complete protein, adding vitamins, and adding flavor from fermented carbs when allowed to do its thing slowly. Make it slow-rise sourdough bread, and you add the benefits from lactic acid bacteria to those from the yeast.

Sourdough whole-grain breads can indeed be the staff of life. Modern commercial white breads are just the stuff of fat. If you need to live off wheat berries and beans, it's better to follow traditional practices, soaking your legumes before cooking and making slow-rise sourdough breads from your wheat.

As for ghee, it keeps best sealed in an amber jar stored somewhere cool and dark. You can refrigerate after opening to extend its open shelf life, but anyone who can't use up a jar of ghee well within the 3 months or more it lasts well opened on a kitchen shelf must not be cooking/eating much.