Serious Green: Freeze It Now, Eat It Later
"Freezing is easier than traditional canning, but don't just start chucking plums into the freezer with reckless abandon."
[Photograph: Cornell University Library]
Summer is on its way out the door and it's taking delicious fruits and vegetables with it. Now's the time to preserve the bounty from your garden or local farmers' market, to keep you eating local during the tomato-less and berry-less days ahead.
Over the past couple of years, I've fallen head-over-heels in love with canning. I've canned blackberry-ginger jam and sweet pickles, spicy tomato sauce and sour cherry preserves. I've got a shelf full of canning books, both new and old. I've taught others to can, and I even wrote a 50-page senior essay on the history and significance of canning. But somehow with all of my jamming, canning, and processing of jars, I totally missed the boat on the freezing method.
For me, the freezer has been always a place for storing quarts of homemade chicken stock (when I don't feel like cooking) and applesauce, but not much else. I don't consider myself a frozen vegetable kind of girl. But when my friend Ellie relayed stories of her freezer success, I realized it was time to give the ol' icebox a second thought.
This summer, I'll be freezing the last of the tomatoes, corn, and anything else I can get my hands on. The freezing method is frugal, quick, safe, and easy. Some tips, after the jump.
Low-acid foods such as corn and beans can't be canned in a water batter canner (they require a steam-pressure canner) so I usually forgo canning them. But the freezer doesn't discriminate. All fruits and vegetables, no matter the acidity level, are welcome.
Freezing is much less time-consuming than using a boiling water bath (big plus here, folks) since you don't have to stand over a boiling pot during the hottest days of summer. In addition, freezing products at their peak means they'll retain most vitamins and minerals. Yes, freezing is easier than traditional canning, but don't just start chucking plums into the freezer with reckless abandon.
Equipment
If you want to freeze in plastic baggies, use thick freezer bags, which are specially formulated to prevent dreaded freezer burn.
To avoid plastic, I freeze food in quart and pint-sized glass Ball canning jars when I can. If you choose this route, make sure to leave room for expansion so you don't end up with explosive glass all over the freezer. Ball also makes special plastic freezer jars and lids free of the bisphenol-A (BPA) chemical.
Measure and Label
Think about how you'll be using the food. Think about quantities you'll want. Freeze in portions that will suit you and your family. Label clearly. What seems obvious now might be a mystery object in six months.
Buy Seasonal and Buy a Lot
Take advantage of bulk discounts. Just because the farmer doesn't have a sign saying so, doesn't mean they won't give you a special deal if you buy a large quantity (say eight dozen ears of corn). It never hurts to ask. Also, try tromping around the farmers' market just before the end-of-day closing bell for good deals. If farmers have any product left, they'll want to get rid of it fast. They don't want to lug produce all the way back to the farm.
Be Picky
Freezing isn't going to improve the quality of what you've got so don't freeze anything that you wouldn't want to eat right now. Select ripe, firm berries and wash them in cold water, discarding any bruised or rotting fruits.
Cook it Now
[Photograph: the bittenword.com]
Instead of freezing pounds of tomatoes, cook them down into more manageable quarts of ready-to-go tomato sauce. Whip up an extra-large batch of pesto, freeze individual portions in plastic ice cube trays or muffin tins, then transfer the cubes to a freezer bag. Freezer jam is also a revelation. It doesn't get cooked down like the normal stuff, so it really tastes of fresh fruit.
Blanch and Cool. Repeat.
Freezing things raw won't result in a fresher final product either. A quick dip in a hot boiling bath stops natural enzymes from leaving your veggies with an off-flavor, color, and texture. Onions, green peppers, and berries are the only things that can skip the bath. Don't skip this step otherwise. You can check with your local extension agency for a list of blanching times or The University of Missouri provides an excellent guide. As soon as the blanching time is complete, plunge the vegetables into an ice water water to stop the cooking process. If you are putting away large quantities of food, you may want to think about buying a large bag of ice. You'll be going through it quickly.
Freeze Before Freezing
Round up your cookie sheets and enlist them to help you in a new service. I favor the tray-packing method because it keeps individual pieces loose, allowing you to pour only what you need from a package. After the vegetables are blanched, cooled, and drained, spread them out in a single layer on the trays and freeze. Leave in the freezer just long enough to freeze firm. For larger fruits--such as pears, peaches, and nectarines--peel, pit, and slice the fruit and then freeze the individual slices on trays.
Vacuum Seal
It's easy to find inexpensive vacuum sealers for home use, but you can still do a pretty good job without one. Go low-tech: use a simple drinking straw to suck out any remaining air from plastic baggies. Worked for me.
Eat It
Finally, just because you've stocked your freezer full doesn't mean you should just sit back and admire your handywork. Eat it! As a rule of thumb, aim to eat everything within six to ten months. Besides, if you let too much time go by, the fresh, local stuff will be showing back up in the markets once again.
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17 Comments:
This is a very inspiring post. Thank you.
Uh, inspiring in a "I need to get off my butt and freeze some stuff" kind of way, not a "I need a tissue" kind of way.
sorahatch at 5:16PM on 09/08/09
Tip for those with side-by-side fridges: Buy a stack of fast-food trays (I got mine at Smart & Final) and use them to spread stuff out. Buy a pack of PVC couplers and use four per tray, one in each corner, to stack them up. It's the only way I can freeze quantities of anything in my freezer.
Someday I'll have a garage freezer that can accommodate a whole cookie sheet...!
mschlock at 6:49PM on 09/08/09
i've started to freeze brussel sprouts, cooked sweet potatoes, berries, cut cantaloupes, and even dim sum, :)
gargupie at 7:31PM on 09/08/09
I've been making soups/stews/veggie chili out of the great summer produce and freezing it for easy lunches and dinners. Nothing like coming home after a long day, pull a ziploc bag out of the freezer and after 5 minutes in the microwave, have a hot dinner. Ahhhh....
anniede at 12:38AM on 09/09/09
Great pictures.
Tomatoes also do not need to be blanched. If you're cooking down sauce, you've done that anyway, but tomatoes can just be put into the freezer. I freeze in bags or jars, only removing the cores (maybe cut in half and remove some seeds and jelly). I don't try to keep them whole, but squish them together to help eliminate air/freezer burn. No need to peel, either, as the peel will come off in sheets when it's thawed. I don't know if this is the optimal way to freeze tomatoes, but it sure is the easiest. You can freeze just a couple of tomatoes if you want. 30 seconds. no fuss. Best of all, although they will be very watery when they've thawed, they'll still taste absolutely fresh.
The exception to squishing the tomatoes together is cherries (there's nothing like sun golds mid-winter. In fact, there's nothing like sun golds mid-summer). I freeze them IQF (if they're dry they'll freeze separately in a bag without having to tray them) so I can put a few into a salad, where the texture won't be wonderful, but they'll bring a great taste. You want to leave the skin intact so it contains the interior, and you don't want them to thaw completely before they're eaten.
Hot peppers are terrific to freeze, since you can just take a pepper out, take a few slices from the bottom, and put the pepper back in. No need to thaw or use the whole pepper.
When I freeze in glass jars I use the wide-mouth jars, and if you're buying to freeze these are the ones to buy. You minimize the possibility that freezing liquids will break the jar, as they might if they're forcing their way into the narrower neck of a standard jar if you've misjudged the space you need to leave. Broken glass in the freezer is no fun.
If you've got one, a spaghetti cooker is a great help in blanching veggies, as you can lift all the veggies out at once to get them in the ice bath. At least up north you can use a sink full of cold tap water rather than dealing with ice to cool your blanched veg. Don't try to blanch a whole lot at once. You want every piece of vegetable to have full content with a lot of boiling water. I typically blanch about a pound at once.
lemonfair at 7:57AM on 09/09/09
I love the first picture of the inside of a freezer. Does anybody's freezer look that good? If so, come fix mine!
Tombolo at 8:48AM on 09/09/09
I've been freezing lots of stock, sauces, beans, tomatoes, etc. since reading Mark Bittman's article on freezing foods (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/dining/06mini.html). I tend to fill recycled glass containers with my goods, but a few have cracked. Now I make sure I cool the foods completely in the fridge before transferring them to the freezer, and I leave at least a half inch space in the jar--which has prevented cracking thus far.
OccasionalOmnivore at 9:39AM on 09/09/09
Feed your Freezer and your Freezer will feed you!
AlysO at 11:22PM on 09/09/09
Awesome post... I feel so inspired!
Thanks!
Brownie at 10:57AM on 09/12/09
I live alone and I know that life is meaningless without a chest freezer
It warms the cockles of my heart to know all the food deals I have snagged, tagged and bagged, sitting snugly in my freezer.
I smile at the thought of it
kah9932 at 1:54AM on 09/15/09
What a wonderful and informative post! Taking air out with a straw!!! You ought to get a Nobel prize for that. I saw on TV they have a little air-withdrawer (or whatever you call such a thing) like a large pen.
I've been freezing pesto for years and it's great. Ditto anything home made (like tomato sauce) in small quantities. Never thought of muffin tins, I use ice cube trays. Lately I'm hooked on Thai food, and so when I open a can of coconut milk (be sure to shake it beforehand), I immediately freeze in ice cube trays all but what's needed for dish I'm making then, because I cook for just me.
aurora89 at 6:40AM on 09/15/09
My husband keeps threatening to get me a chest freezer but we've no room for one. Unfortunately the ice maker and raw frozen medallions of dog food take up most of our freezer but you've inspired me to take on the challenge. I'll get to the farmers' market late rather than early and see what I can find as winter is already on its way! Thanks, cookingwithdee.net
tdl1501 at 7:18AM on 09/15/09
Freezing is such a quick, easy, time saving, and inexpensive way to enjoy the fruits of your labor [no pun intended] in the middle of winter, or anytime you want to take advantage of good price deals. I have pick-your-own peaches & sour cherries in my freezer now, for midwinter pies & cobblers. Also have sweet peppers that I got @ a steal from our local farmers market. It seems I never have peppers on hand unless I'm making sutffed peppers. They're an ingredient in so many recipes, and this way I always have them available. The other really nice feature of freezing is that you can do it in a few minutes on a daily basis, as opposed to all the equipment you need to drag out for canning, & having to wait for a huge amount of edibles to work with make it worthwhile. I grow Roma tomatoes, and currently have about 8 Ziploc quarts in the freezer, from just a single plant [I have 2 plants]. I just rinse them, quarter, put in the vacuum Ziploc bags and that's it. I don't bother peeling.....skins are good for you, but like Lemonfair said, they come off easily when thawed. I will try her suggestion of just cutting in half with my next daily harvesting. I don't core them or take any juice/seeds out however........ they are all natural/organic and edible parts!
I will add for the novice freezeperson, as Tressa stated.........DO MAKE SURE YOU LABEL........you won't remember exactly what you did in January. Also, with fruits, you will want to jot down the NUMBER OF CUPS and whether you added SUGAR or not. I try to freeze the amounts used for my average pie or cobbler recipe, it makes it a whole lot easier.
I hope a lot of people get inspired.........it's a way to "put up".
jackie2830 at 8:21AM on 09/16/09
Loved the article but it won't let
me email it to myself; it keeps
saying "oops you forgot to fill out
a required field." I've tried it 6 times.
Is it me or is it the computer? I
know the little numbers/letters are
distorted on purpose, but 6 times
wrong? I've never had so much
trouble.
Jillbru at 11:35AM on 09/17/09
LABEL & DATE ! LABEL & DATE ! LABEL & DATE ! I can't stress it enough. I learned my lesson after too many tossed mystery packages! You may think as I did 'oh, I can tell what it is just by looking and/or feeling, but much to my surprise time and time again freezing does something to the visual and tactile senses percieption so I open it up and smell it then taste it and so on freezing temp's mute flavors and smells. Duh to my surprise is it a marinara, a hearty tomato base stew, chili w/ tomatos or just plain tomato sauce and so on. I reiterate, LABEL & DATE ! LABEL & DATE ! LABEL & DATE ! the rest is up to you great post thanks.
butterfingers at 5:22PM on 09/18/09
My biggest problem in my side-by-side freezer is losing things then finding a nasty old freezer-burned brick of something that never makes it to the table. I've tried to keep an inventory sheet for the freezer and my pantry - works for awhile until I forget to update it ...
I'm glad you mentioned the FoodSaver vacuum sealers. I just bought one at Sam's (about half the Amazon price) and have been having a ball dividing up two-person portions for my wife and I. Boneless chicken breasts are on sale this week so I pounded some cutlets, chopped some up for stir fry, seasoned some and left others plain. They are all neatly vacuum sealed, labeled and ready to grab.
As to labeling, sometimes I prepare and season things so I have a start on a specific recipe. I usually put a note on the freezer container as to what recipe the item goes with, along with the date.
I'm a bit surprised at your comment about canning corn and beans. My mother and grandmother canned bushels of corn, green beans, apple sauce, peaches, and tomatoes using a standard water bath canner and we never had problems - maybe we ate it all up between seasons.
As an aside, my grandmother had a food drier and my uncle LOVED dried corn. It had a very different taste from any other preservation method that I never acquired . . .
I like to freeze snack-size zipper bags full of salsa makings (everything but the tomatoes). A bunch of cilantro, several limes, a couple red onions, and a handful of jalapenos turn into about a dozen little frozen batches ready to thaw and add to chopped fresh tomatoes.
DAFOXFL at 10:07AM on 09/21/09
@ DAFOXFL - In my research I've read and heard plenty of stories of grandmas canning everything in a water bath, or not canning at all - just heating the food up, screwing the lid and rings on tight, and hoping for a good seal. Many people say they never had problems, but I follow the new guidelines which say that low acid foods (corn and beans) require 240 F which can only be reached by creating steam under pressure. Better safe than sorry.
tressa eaton at 12:46PM on 09/21/09