How To: Freeze Vegetables

Harvest season is starting to come to a close around here. For us, that means we have more vegetables than we could possibly eat so we have been freezing them so that we are stocked up for the zombie apocalypse....or winter. Whichever. ;) In this tutorial, I am using green beans but the process is basically the same for any type of vegetable. 

I know some people who just wash their veggies and stick them in the freezer but by doing that the vegetables lose their nutrients and flavor over time. It is best to blanch them first so that they keep all of their farm fresh goodness. That is what I am going to be talking about today.

Start by prepping your vegetables. For green beans you snap off the ends and then break the rest of the beans into bite sized pieces. With corn, you just shuck the husks and break off the end. For zucchini and summer squash, cut off the ends then slice the rest into 1/2-inch slices.

Blanch your veggies by boiling for 3 minutes. Do not overload your pot. With green beans you will want to use a gallon of water to cook 1 lb of green beans (about 4 cups). Corn works with about 4 or 5 ears in one gallon. For squash, add enough so that it is only one layer deep.

After the 3 minutes is up, remove veggies with a slotted spoon and place in a colander. Immediately submerge the colander in a sink full of ice water. You do this so that the vegetables cool quickly and don't continue cooking as they cool down. 

Whenever we get gallon buckets of ice cream, I keep the container and wash it out. Then I fill it up with water and keep it in our deep freezer. When I need to blanch veggies, I take out the bucket of ice and use it for the ice water bath. The big block keeps the water cold longer and I don't have to worry about making a ton of ice or going to pick up big bags of it. Plus, keeping your freezer full makes it more energy efficient and your food will stay cold longer if the power goes out. 

Once your vegetables are cool, lift the colander out of the sink and drain any excess water. If you are freezing green beans, they are ready to go right into a freezer bag. For corn, you will want to cut the kernels off of the cob first and for zucchini I like to cut it into 1/2 inch chunks.

Place the vegetables in freezer bags (I like to use quart size bags and fill them with 2 cups of veggies since that is usually how much I need at a time) and squeeze out as much air as you can before sealing. If you have one of those food savers that sucks out the excess air, use that. Air = freezer burn. We don't have the money to get anything like that right now so I just did the best that I could. I don't think freezer burn affects the nutrients or safety of the food but it does change the appearance and flavor.

After your bags are sealed, spread the vegetables out so that the bag lays flat. Then just label and date the bags and stack them in the freezer!

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