by Diane Sagers
CORRESPONDENT
As the harvest season gets underway, many home gardeners are enjoying the delightful flavor of homegrown garden produce. Fresh produce makes for a very tasty meal, but there can be too much of a good thing. Garden production may exceed the family's appetites. If you can't eat it fast enough, the vegetables become old before you can use them up, causing the flavor to be less than it should be.
You do have the option to share your garden's delights with the neighbors, and you have the option of saving some for later by preserving it properly.
The easiest way to preserve vegetables is to freeze them. Bottling them is another good option, but since vegetables are low-acid foods, they must be processed in a pressure canner. Each method has its pros and cons.
In their favor, foods that are processed in bottles do not require the expense of a freezer to store them and if the power goes out, they will be unaffected. However, preparation and processing takes considerably longer time than preparation for freezing. The taste, although still good, will not have the same fresh flavor that the vegetables had when they were picked from the garden. Processing methods must be followed meticulously to destroy any microorganisms that could cause spoilage.
Freezer foods on the other hand, retain nearly the same flavor as fresh-picked produce. Preparing produce for the freezer is relatively simple. No other method of preservation better retains the natural color, flavor and nutritive value of fresh foods than freezing. It is definitely the most popular method of food preservation.
On the downside, if you make a mistake freezing produce, the quality will be reduced and flavor changed, but the food will remain safe to eat. If, however, there is a prolonged power outage, frozen food will thaw, becoming unsafe to eat and will need to be discarded.
For optimum flavor, vegetables should be frozen properly.
Freezing preserves quality, but it does not improve it. Start with a top quality product and handle it under sanitary conditions. This is the single most important factor in producing good results.
In general, bigger is not better when harvesting produce. Beans, for example should be full and crisp, but not bumpy. Zucchini should be about the size of a salad cucumber, not the size of a baseball bat. Beets are ideal when about the size of a golf ball, not a softball. Ideal carrot size depends on the variety but all are best before they become fat and woody.
For best quality -- providing the proper preparation steps have been followed -- food will remain tasty for about a year in the freezer. After that, it is still safe to eat but the quality deteriorates. It is a good idea to rotate -- put new frozen food at the bottom of the freezer pile with older packages on top for immediate use. Keep a written log and add to it as you add food, taking off items used. Such a list will keep you up-to-date on what is available and how old it is.
Preserving food by freezing is based on the premise that extreme growth retards growth of microorganisms and slows down enzyme activity. It does not sterilize food.
Enzymes cause aging and other chemical changes in food. They work gradually, but may make the food an off-color and destroy the fresh flavor if they are not inactivated. Heat deactivates enzymes. For this reason, most vegetables must be blanched before freezing. Fruits do not need a heat treatment before freezing. Sugar and antioxidants take the place of blanching for fruits.
Vegetables may be frozen without blanching if you plan to use them within a week or two. However, as time passes, flavor and color change. The vegetables you froze in August may taste uniformly like alfalfa hay with a similar texture by the next April if they are not blanched before they are frozen.
Blanching is another name for scalding. Vegetables must be quickly heated through to stop the enzyme action but not heated long enough to cook it. In most cases you can tell when the product has heated enough because the vegetable pieces will appear somewhat darker and slightly translucent. Depending on the vegetable and the size of the pieces, the vegetables may only need to be heated for two or three minutes in boiling water. The larger the pieces, the longer the time required for blanching. Corn on the cob, for example, may require six minutes for 1 1/2-inch diameter ears up to 10 minutes for ears larger than 2 inches in diameter.
As soon as blanching is complete, immediately put the vegetables into very cold water to stop the cooking process.
Place the vegetable pieces into proper packaging to freeze it. The right packaging prevents chemical changes from exposure to air including loss of color, flavor, nutrient value and also the absorption of odors.
Packages need to be air tight although they do not need to be hermetically sealed although that is a useful form of packaging. The package must be moisture/vapor proof, of food quality, with no odor or taste. You must close it tightly.
Many companies manufacture rigid freezer containers. Canning jars make excellent freezer containers although there is potential for breakage. Those with the slanted, straight sides are better than those that curve in at the top because the food can be removed easily while it is still frozen. Plastic freezer boxes are ideal because they stack well and do not break easily.
Flexible bags are also excellent for freezing if you use freezer quality bags. Foods packaged in sandwich and other lightweight plastic bags tend to dry out and develop "freezer burn."
Fill the bags and twist the top squeezing out extra air and tie off with handy ties included in the packaging. When using zipper-top bags, squeeze out the extra air and seal.
For best results, package food leaving no air pockets. For dry pack vegetables, leave no headspace. For packs that are liquid at room temperature, allow 1/4- to 1/2-inch headspace for expansion when freezing. Leave a little space between the food and the tie off wire on those types of bags to allow for the expansion.
After use, wash rigid containers in hot soapy water and store until ready to use again. Do not re-use plastic bags.
Place the vegetables directly into the freezer. A deep freeze is better for long-term storage than the freezer of a refrigerator because it can be kept at a lower temperature. The lower the temperature, the better the food will keep. Freeze quickly and place the packages in a single layer where possible in the coldest part of the freezer -- on the bottom or over the compressor. Ideally, the temperature inside the freezer should be 0 degrees F., or below for freezing unfrozen food. Set the temperature at -10 or lower to keep the temperature below 0. Put no more unfrozen food into a freezer than will freeze in 24 hours.
When you use the vegetables you will get the best quality if you cook them without thawing them first.