Freezing Vegetables from your Garden

It's that time of year. The time where our garden is producing veggies much faster than we can eat them! We've already given some to family and friends but now it's time to start storing some for later. Which means we either need to can things or freeze them. Well I'm here to tell you that I know nothing about canning, and looking at the easy 32-step DIY blogs, that don't look easy at all, I have no desire to try on my own. Which means that we freeze our extra veggies!

Freezing is much easier and quicker. I did this batch yesterday after I got home from work. When you freeze your produce the first step is to determine if it should be frozen whole or sliced. Squash definitely should be sliced. Green beans can be left whole or cut. I chose to cut them this time.

Once you have your veggies, make sure you wash them very well- this is the last time you will be washing them before cooking and eating them, and you want to get as much dirt/bacteria off of them before you stick them in the freezer for the next 5 months.

 

 

Once they're nice and clean, prepare them. I cut my squash into rounds and cut my beans in half (also removing the ends).

The next step is to blanch them. By doing so you are killing unwanted bacteria and helping the veggies to retain their nutrients and crisp texture. Who likes bland and soggy veggies? Not this girl.

Step one in blanching is to put your produce in boiling water for 3 minutes.

 

 

Then once you remove them, put them straight into ice water to stop the cooking.

 

I only needed to leave mine in for about 30 seconds- you're just trying to cool them off.

After that I dump mine onto a kitchen towel and pat them dry. 

Once they're dry you want to flash freeze them. This process also helps keep them from getting soggy or freezing into a big clump.

You'll want to put them on a tray lined with wax paper but make sure that they're all lying flat on the tray and not smashed into one another. Once they're lined, stick them in the freezer (the freezer should be turned to a very cold setting and you should try to put the veggies on top where it's cold and there is air flow to freeze them evenly.

 

Leave them in there for an hour or two, and don't open the freezer while they're hardening- the change in temperature can also lead to soggy veggies.

Once they're frozen solid, remove them from the wax paper and put them in appropriately marked freezer bags.

Voila! You now have veggies in your freezer that will last up to a year (probably longer, I haven't tried though). Once you decide that you want to cook them, do it frozen. If you let them thaw, they will get soggy despite all of your hard work today.

These frozen veggies are great to steam, throw into a stir fry, grill, bake, whatever you want to do with them.

 

Of course once I finished with that batch of freezer squash and beans I went out to my garden and picked this!

I think it's safe to say we'll have plenty of fresh, healthy food in our house for the next few months.
As always, if anyone has any questions or suggestions please let me know!