Freezing Your Garden Produce
It’s gardening season! I love this time of year, and if the number of gardens popping up in my neighborhood is any indication, I’m not the only one excited about spring gardening. One thing to consider for your garden is how to make your garden harvest last throughout the year by preserving it through canning, freezing, or drying. The purpose of food preservation is to slow down the rate of food spoilage so that it lasts longer. This week, let’s take a look at some tips for freezing your garden produce.
Freezing foods is quick and easy, and it can be an inexpensive way to preserve foods if you already have a freezer. The main thing to keep in mind when you are freezing produce is to control the enzymes before you freeze. Fruits and vegetables have natural enzymes that help them grow and mature. These enzymes continue to work after the produce is picked, which can cause browning or mushiness. We need to control these enzymes before freezing to limit any problems because freezing alone will not stop the enzymes.
You can control enzymes by blanching vegetables and some fruits. Blanching involves placing the produce in boiling water or steam. Then, the produce is placed in cold water to stop the cooking process. Different vegetables require different blanching times, so be sure to look up the correct time.
Most fruit does not need to be blanched before freezing. Instead, control enzymes by adding Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) to the fruit. Depending on how you plan to use the fruit, you can freeze it in a syrup pack, sugar pack, or dry pack.
A few more tips for freezing produce:
- Select the best quality produce for freezing. It should be ripe and firm.
- Freezing can have a bad effect on some herbs and spices. Pepper, cloves, garlic, green pepper and some herbs become stronger and bitter. Salt loses flavor and can cause some items containing fat to become rancid.
- Leave space between packages in the freezer so air can freely circulate and the foods will freeze faster. After your food is frozen, you can store the packages close together.
- Label your packages so you know what they are and how long they have been in the freezer.
You can find great, research-based information about home preservation from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Their website is: nchfp.uga.edu/. Be sure to call Kate Whitney at the Extension Office at 254-435-2331 if you have any questions about canning or freezing foods. Come back next week to learn pointers for canning vegetables.
