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| Raspberries image credit epSos.de on Wikipedia. |
No one likes buying fruits and veggies
out of season—they're usually ugly, less tasty, and more expensive
to boot. It might seem like you have no choice besides what the
grocery store has in stock on any given day, but with a little thinking ahead, you can
take control and eat quality produce year-round. All you have to do
is preserve and store
the fresh and healthy fruits and veggies you can get in peak season,
in the summer and fall. When you stock up and take some time to
preserve fresh and healthy local produce in the fall, you don't
have to resort to buying stale, overpriced, and unsustainable produce
shipped from the other side of the globe.
One common and effective method of preserving food is freezing. It sounds simple enough, but with a little extra knowledge you can be sure to get the freshest, tastiest frozen fruits and veggies possible every time. Learn these produce-freezing basics and you won't ever have to experience the woe of getting mushy, tasteless vegetables out of the freezer because you didn't know to blanch them before storing them away.
Produce Freezing Basics
For some veggies, all you have to do is
clean them, chop them, and stick them in freezer-safe containers, and
call it done. But many fruits and veggies require some brief cooking
or preparation before storage. The most important thing to remember
is that you must start with fresh, ripe, and carefully cleaned
fruits and vegetables. If you are preparing foods to store away and
want them to last, you don't want to start with under-ripe,
over-ripe, or dirty produce.
Most
of the time you will want to chop your fruit or vegetables into small
pieces before freezing. However, some fruits and veggies do very well
frozen whole.
Produce
that freezes well whole: berries, bananas, tomatoes, corn, asparagus,
beans, and chili peppers.
Produce
you should chop before freezing: pineapple, mango, melon, peaches,
nectarines, plums, cherries, apples, bell peppers, avocado,
cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, peas, summer and winter squash
Lemon Juice
Many fruits and
vegetables will turn brown after you cut them, and you don't want
your frozen produce coming out discolored. To keep this from
happening, you just have to dip them in a mixture of lemon juice and
water, which will inactivate the enzymes that would cause them to
turn brown.
Fruits and veggies
that will turn brown: apples, bananas, peaches, nectarines, avocado,
potatoes
Lemon Juice
Solution Recipe: 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice per 4 cups water. Simply
dunk your produce into a bowl of this mixture after chopping and then
allow to dry.
Blanching Vegetables
Almost all veggies, and some fruits for cooking,
should be blanched before storing them away in the freezer. Blanching
is a simple process where you briefly cook the food, then dunk it in
cold water or ice. This heating-then-cooling process works because it
inactivates enzymes that cause the food to continue to ripen, which
leads to the produce losing nutrients, color, taste, and texture.
Blanching your produce before storing it in the freezer will make
your produce more nutritious and look and taste fresher when you take
it out of storage.
Vegetables to blanch: All
veggies except for tomatoes, onions, potatoes, winter squash,
and corn
Fruits to blanch: tomatoes,
apples, peaches, pears to be used for cooking
The basic blanching process is simple:
First, you boil the chopped fruit or vegetables for a very brief time
(exact times vary depending on the veggie). Then, you remove them
from the boiling water and dunk them in a bowl of cold water to cool
them down quickly. If you want, you can use steam instead of boiling
water for some vegetables (this works best for broccoli, cauliflower,
pumpkin, and squash).
Look at this guide to blanching times for fruits and vegetables from National Center for Home Food Preservation to figure out
the exact boiling times for specific fruits and veggies.
Storage
After you blanch
your fruits and veggies, all you have to do is pat them dry to remove
any excess moisture and then pack them into jars, freezer bags, or
any freezer-safe container. We recommend re-usable containers like
mason jars or tupperware. If you want to freeze a liquidy mixture
like tomato sauce, you can safely freeze it in mason jars as long as
you do it correctly. Pour the the sauce into jars leaving 1.5-2
inches of space at the top to allow the liquid to expand. Then
loosely screw on the lids,
and put them in the freezer. After about 24 hours, go back and screw
the lids on tightly.
Fruits and vegetables
frozen properly can keep for 6 months up to a year.
Bonus Freezing Tip: To
keep the cut fruit and veggie pieces from sticking and freezing
together, freeze them on cookie sheets. After blanching, simply
spread out the slices on cookie sheets and put them in a freezer for
a few hours. Then transfer them to jars or freezer bags, and the
pieces will stay nice and separated instead of all freezing together
into a difficult-to-handle block.
Final Bits
Now you have all the information you need to confidently freeze all sorts of fruits and vegetables for storage. This should be enough to get you started, but if you want to learn more, we found some more great articles and guides online.
Learn More about Freezing Fruits and Veggies:
- The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a wealth of resources for all kinds of food preservation methods
- 11 Secrets to Properly Freezing Produce
- In-depth Guide to Freezing Vegetables: specifically tomatoes, green beans, pepper, summer squash, and corn
- More tips for saving energy with your freezer
Soon we will have guides on other ways to preserve and put food by, including sun-drying and canning! For now, we'll leave you with a few tips for saving energy with your freezer, so you can make freezing your food as cheap and sustainable as possible.
Tips for Saving Energy With Your Freezer:
- Pay attention to the temperature setting: Keep the temperature at 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and no cooler. If you don't have an exact temperature setting, you will probably have to adjust your freezer to run cooler during the summer, but don't forget to turn it back up during the winter months.
- Keep your freezer in a cool, temperature-controlled place: It's best to keep your freezer inside, where the temperature will remain relatively cool and stable. If you keep your freezer outside or in the garage, it will have to work a lot harder when it's warm outside.
- Let air circulate behind your freezer: Make sure your freezer isn't pushed up against the wall, and instead leave at least a few inches of space behind it. This allows air to circulate and pull away the hot air venting out of the back of the machine.
- Keep it Sealed: Make sure your freezer door shuts tight and forms a tight seal. Make sure to keep your freezer in good condition and replace the seals or the whole door if it stops sealing properly.
- Keep it Closed: The less you open the freezer door, the safer and more energy-efficient your freezer will be. Try to plan ahead and only open your storage freezer very infrequently. Try taking out the items you need only once per week and place the food you need for the week in the fridge to keep in-between.
- Keep it Full: A full freezer uses less energy than a half-empty one, because a freezer packed to the brim with frozen food insulates itself much better. If you don't have enough food to fill it up to the top, use frozen bottles of water, instead, for the same energy-saving effect!
