Blanching is something I've only recently tried, and I'm punching myself for not getting into this before. When you live alone, it's very difficult to find small quantities of some items. Take celery, for example. You don't go to the grocery and buy like two stalks of celery. You have to get a large pack. And that's lovely; it's very low cost and to some, it probably isn't a big deal to just toss the rest of it. But waste has always bothered me, and it's something I try to avoid.
Waste sucks for several reasons. For one thing, money is wasted. Cheap or not, little costs add up and why waste it? Also, rotten vegetables let out CO2 and are bad for the environment. Seriously, read about it. Though I feel many people have the best intentions when it comes to the environment, the majority are blissfully unaware of how much waste they produce, the fact that recycling is an immensely inefficient and underused process, and just generally how much small things can impact the entire world.
The little things we do are what change the world, so don't think to yourself, "Well everyone else does it this way," or, "How is me doing this going to make a difference?" For one thing, every time one of us does things better, that has an impact. For another, you educating others is how change can take off. I learned how to make bread from a friend showing me how easy it was.
And now with all the chaos in the world, having things preserved means you don't have to rely on the store to have it at that moment. You already do.
Let's start with regular freezer items. When it comes to things like:
- Onions
- Peppers
- Green onions
- Strawberries
- Blueberries
Just chopping them up and freezing it is all you need to do. I've been doing this with peppers and onions forever, and let me tell you, it is nice to be able to grab some onion from the freezer when I decide I want to cook. I even will chop half an onion in strips for some recipes and more finely for others. When I freeze them, I try and flatten out the bag so I don't wind up with a giant hunk of onion.
Of course, not all veggies can just be frozen. Some veggies get a little weirded out by the whole freezing thing. I learned the hard way a few years ago that with some items, the freezer will wreck the flavor. I sliced some mushrooms and froze them, only later to see they'd gotten all weird colored and weren't appetizing at all. The problem is that some vegetables continue to break down, so you have to slightly cook them to stop this process.
Here's a tragic example of freezing gone wrong. I'd stored the yellow squash in the back of the fridge where apparently it had gotten too cold, so one of my squash partially froze and turned mushy. Not ideal squash material.
Blanching is when you slightly cook the item, just enough to stop enzymes from discoloring and altering the flavor of food. You drop the food in boiling water and cook it slightly, then drop it in ice water to freeze it in that state and prevent more cooking. Then when you use it, you complete the cooking process. Easy.
Now, with mushrooms, those cook so fast that I just cook them all the way. I've been doing that for years. But I'd yet to try blanching, just relying on myself to come up with a recipe to use the item up in before it went bad. The problem with this is you never really know how long it has been picked by the time you get it at the store, so you can buy green beans on a Saturday and have them start to go bad by Monday in some cases, but a week and a half later in others. Preservation is a great to way to prevent waste. Here's what I started out with on my first try of blanching:
- Celery
- Zucchini
- Asparagus
- Green beans
- Okra
Different vegetables need varying amounts of time to be blanched, but for the most part it is around 3 minutes. Here is a chart with tons of info on different times for veggies you can use as a reference.
The veggies would get very bright in color as they boiled. It was pretty neat to see. After the timer went off, I'd pull out the veggies and quickly get them into ice water to stop the cooking process.
After they were cool, I added them to a strainer and get as much water off as I could before bagging them and freezing. You have to keep in mind that any liquid still on the veggies is going to freeze on them or act as cement and make them all stick together. I have a pretty great freezer so I haven't had issues with freezerburn with a few weeks of freezing. But if you plan to use a foodsaver or anything to seal the bag even more, I would highly suggest patting the veggies dry with paper towels before doing so to keep them as fresh as possible. I would recommend doubling up on freezer bags if you have a notoriously bad freezer at home.
Freezer bags are going to work best here to keep air out of the bag. And again, I always lay the bag flat and spread everything out so they don't stick together. The best thing is to lay them out on a tray and freeze them before bagging, but I don't have enough space to do that, so my workaround is the flat bag.
On another note, you can also grow some veggies at home using remnants. Check out my little green onion collection. I kept the root and planted them in a planter on my patio, and within a week and a half, look at the green onions coming back.
I've also done this with romaine lettuce and celery. For the celery and lettuce, though, you put it in a small cup of water and let it get some sun. The leftover part turns into a planter, basically, and a new one starts to grow. Once it is a few inches tall you can plant it and voila, home grown veggies.
I won't pretend to be an avid gardener, as I did a terrible job maintaining my garden last time I tried. But I've got a pretty simple patio garden now that I am working on.
I really get enjoyment out of finding ways to preserve and grow food. It isn't a monetary thing in most cases - though prices are higher on items like sweet peppers, celery is very affordable. But even if you don't need to do this, if the store is 2 blocks away and you can just walk to it to grab what you need on any given day, it only benefits you do know how to preserve.
This is a pretty high level post but I hope it inspires you to try. When you've got something in the fridge you aren't sure you'll get to before it goes bad, taking a few minutes to preserve it right will mean it's ready for you when you need it.
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