Monday, June 6, 2011

How to Freeze Vegetables

If you have a garden, you will need ways to store extra food from your harvest of vegetables.  One of the ways to keep food longer is to freeze it of course!  You can even freeze vegetables you have bought from the store if you would like to stock up when there is a good sale.  Freezing causes the organisms that cause spoilage in food to become inactive (but not die).

Fresh Produce at Farmer's Market Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA





You can freeze your vegetables in just about anything, but the easiest are plastic freezer bags (like Ziploc).  You can also freeze in canning jars, plastic containers, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and freezer paper.  Just make sure to leave room for the veggies to expand as they freeze.

Before you put your vegetables in the freezer, you will need to blanch them, which means you will heat them in boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes and then immediately cool them in cold water.  This kills the enzymes that age vegetables and will help them to taste better when thawed.  The quick submersion in cold water stops them from cooking any more.

To prevent darkening in some vegetables, you will need to soak them in an anti-darkening agent like lemon juice before freezing them.  Use one teaspoon per quart of water and soak for about 5-10 minutes.  There are also commercial preparations for soaking available.


Many blessings.




5 comments:

  1. We eat so much veggies that I have never have enough to freeze :-( but we do fruits because our fruits season is so short and fresh frozen is the closest to fresh over here :-)

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  2. :) We eat lots of veggies too, Mrs. Stam (and fruits!)

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  3. Yep very good instruction, the very thing I do, We freeze everything, from tomatos to blueberries, not blueberries you do not even wash just bag and freeze, wash when read to use them. Hugs my friend

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  4. Wonderful. I want to try the fruits. I wasn't sure if there was something special you needed to do to them before freezing. Thanks for the info!

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