Freezing vegetables effectively
In a time where eating healthy food to maintain a good immune system is vital, being able to properly freeze a stockpile of vegetables is important.
To help retain the colour and texture of your vegetables and kill any microbes it is recommended to blanch them before freezing. If you are unfamiliar with what blanching means, it is when you partially cook vegetables in boiling water.
The length of time varies depending on the size, but ideally, if you chop your vegetables into bite-size pieces then when you drop them into boiling water they should only take between 2 and 3 minutes to blanch properly.
Once you have removed them from the boiling water it is recommended to plunge them into iced water to cool them and seal in that nutritional goodness. Make sure they are adequately drained before placing them into a bag then the freezer.
Potatoes are good to freeze as well but like the rest of your vegetables they should be par-boiled or mashed before freezing and uncooked potatoes do not freeze very well.
It is also a good idea to not throw out parsley stalks, celery ends, the tough outsides of fennel bulbs, leek ends, even mushroom stalks. Throw them all into a bag and freeze for future vegetable stock.
Stock up on some quality resealable bags here
