17 June 2026
Today, 17th June, is National Eat Your Vegetables Day. As a supplier and manufacturer of a huge range of air dried and freeze dried vegetable ingredients, we are a team that is passionate about vegetables. We supply the UK’s biggest and best quality food brands who use our dried ingredients to create delicious soups, seasoning blends, baked goods, ready meals and more. Everyone in the J L Priestley team is proud to be helping the nation get more vegetables in their diets.
When vegetables are dried, they retain anything from 50% to 97% of their nutrients, and with the water removed, the retained nutrients become highly concentrated by weight. This concentration of flavour and goodness means that gram for gram they pack much more of a punch. While we love fresh vegetables too, the versatility and longevity of dried ingredients really does make them an incredible resource.
J L Priestley supply whole freeze dried sweetcorn pieces, perfect for using in instant noodle pots, they add a great flash of colour and delicious sweet flavour and texture to baked goods, soups, and ready meals. You can also eat freeze dried sweetcorn kernels without rehydrating them – they’re sweet and crunchy, and make a great addition to a trail mix, burrito bowl, or pasta salad.
We supply broccoli in several forms to meet your product development needs – air dried broccoli powder and freeze dried broccoli beads are great for thickening and seasoning soups, broths, and dips, as well as adding nutritional value and colour. The powder is commonly used in protein powders and meal replacement shakes due to the nutritional benefits – broccoli is often considered a superfood!
We also supply air dried broccoli florets, which can be eaten as they are, as a crunchy vegetable crisp, or used in savoury snack mixes, ready meals, and dehydrated soups to add texture.
Broccoli brings several healthy benefits to the table but for those of you looking to add extra fiber in to your ingredient list this is a great option, the high fiber content acts as a prebiotic, feeding the good bacteria in your gut, which improves digestion and keeps your microbiome balanced.
Carrots are a highly popular ingredient at J L Priestley, and we supply no less that 7 differently sized and processed variations, from shoestring to rings to 1-3mm granules, and more. And that’s before we get in to our bespoke service options!
Carrots in their various dried forms are a great ingredient to use in instant rice and noodle pots, soups, stocks and even in meat products like sausages, where it acts as a binding agent. It can even be used as a partial flour replacement in some applications! The natural sugar in carrot speeds up browning in baked goods, and lends a subtle sweetness and umami flavour, as well as a vibrant yellow or orange due to the beta-carotene orange colouring. Sweet, bright, delicious and versatile. What’s not to like about eating carrots!
We supply Chris’s favourite vegetable, the bell pepper, in green, red or mixed, in a range of sizes from powder through to 9mm pieces. Dried bell pepper is used widely to provide flavouring for crisps and crackers, to add texture to baked goods such as focaccia and savoury scones, and in many marinades and barbeque rubs. Green bell pepper brings a highly savoury dimension to a product’s flavour, with a slightly herbal note, whereas red bell pepper is sweeter and more fruity.
Sweet potato is a relatively new offering for us, and it’s an ingredient that we are excited to bring to our customers. Its flavour profile is earthy, sweet, and nutty, and it brings a lot more nutritional content than its regular-potato cousin. It’s high in vitamin A and C, and contains plenty of dietary fibre and manganese. While there was some debate as to if it should count as a vegetable, a google search proved that this root vegetable does count as one of your 5 a day.
In food manufacturing, it can be used as a natural (and gluten free) thickening agent for soups, sauces, and gravies, and to form part of a crispy coating for fried foods like popcorn chicken and tofu. It sweetness lends it to use in dessert products too – it brings a fudgy texture to cookies, and lends it’s starchy and glutinous texture to Asian inspired desserts like mochi. A truly versatile ingredient, we supply it in powdered form, ideal for the majority of applications required.
Vaida says her favourite vegetable is beetroot, and she offered a recipe for her favourite beetroot soup. While Vaida uses fresh beetroot, our air dried beetroot flake and beetroot powder are great ingredients for making delicious, nutritious, and beautifully coloured instant soup products. Furthermore, the rich pink/purple colour lends itself to all kinds of products. Think smoothie mixes and protein shakes, but also pink coloured pasta, baked goods, dips and dressings. As one of our most versatile and creative dried food ingredients, it delivers in earthy-sweet flavour, rich colour, and a host of nutritional benefits, allowing product development teams to lean into a health-forward angle as well as adding an eye catching burst of natural colour.
We are incredibly proud of the high quality of all our ingredients at J L Priestley, and our expertise doesn’t end with supply. We also process and manufacture ingredients to meet your specific requirements – from toasting to add depth of flavour, to blending ingredients to create custom mixes, as well as kibbling, milling, and more – speak to us today to find out how we can add value to your ingredients and help you achieve your product development goals.
