The summer heat means farmer’s markets, roadside stands, CSAs, backyard gardens, and even the grocery stores are full of the season’s best produce.
If you are blessed with more than you can eat before it spoils, let us teach you how to freeze peak produce.
Our grandmothers spent many hot hours canning seasonal produce, and this can still be a great way to preserve. However, freezing produce is less time consuming than canning, and produce frozen at the peak of freshness maintains its nutritional value better. You may have noticed that we make an effort to include seasonal produce on our monthly plans. This helps keep the price down as fruits and veggies are most affordable in peak season. Luckily, you get the best taste and best nutritional value at peak season too.
So, using our meal plans is a first step for using up extras from your garden, CSA, etc. But sometimes you need a targeted approach. For instance, if you take your kiddos apple picking and end up with a bushel or two, how do you store those? Maybe you score an unbeatable price on several flats of berries that need to be used up quickly. How do you ensure they don’t go to waste? There are a couple of different ways you can go about freezing produce. Be sure to check out our post on What You Can and Cannot Freeze before you get started.
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1. Flash Freeze Individual Items
Flash freezing is the technique we get asked about the most! You can simply prep and freeze your bounty in appropriate portions and use them later to bake or create meals. If you have a large freezer and access to lots of produce, you may never have to visit the frozen food aisle again! This technique works quite well with most produce (think foods you would normally find in the freezer aisle), and even some you wouldn’t expect like tomatoes! With certain items, you may want to be careful to freeze them flat so that you don’t end up with a giant clump of unusable fruit. Check out our post on flash freezing for more details. Just don’t forget to label and date your produce so that you can keep track of what you have.
We have a few posts on individual fruits and veggies for your convenience:
- How to Freeze Peaches
- How to Freeze Apples
- How to Freeze Corn
- How to Freeze Tomatoes
- How to Freeze Onions
2. Prep Items for Easy Meals
Bags of individual items are nice to have, but so are bags that are already mixed and ready to be turned into a quick meal. We focus a lot on freezing full meals around here, but batch cooking can also be a great tool for prepping in bulk items that you use frequently in your kitchen. Think about those quick family favorites or sauces and convenience items that you would rather make from scratch.
- Veggies for Stock – Whenever I have extra carrots, celery, or onions (even if it is just an end or a half that I didn’t use), I throw it into a bag in the freezer labeled “stock.” Then the next time I make homemade chicken stock, I just throw it into the pot. Of course, you could also use them for vegetable stock too.
- Stir Fry Mixes – Peppers, onions, carrots, broccoli, snow peas – whatever it is that you like in a stir fry you can throw it in. Add meat (or not), seasonings, and rice, and you have yourself a quick and healthy dinner.
- Veggie Medley (for soups, casseroles, side dishes) – Again, think about the type of mixes you would purchase in the freezer aisle and simply create your own. You can also make bags of cooking aromatics for recipe starters.
- Smoothie Bags – They make a delicious meal on the go or a snack, and you can pack all of the goodness of fresh produce into them ahead of time! Check out our recipes for Fruit and Yogurt Smoothie Bags or Green Smoothie Bags with Yogurt or make your own combo. You can also blend the smoothies on your prep day as is directed in most of our top 10 smoothie recipes.
- Condiments and Sauces – You could buy them at the store, but they are always better from scratch. I am thinking specifically of preserving tomatoes (try Marinara a la Seaton, 5 Minute Homemade Salsa, or Homemade Salsa Verde) and herbs (i.e. Pesto Sauce or Flank Steak for Two).
- Side Dishes – Our typical focus around here is the main meal, but extra produce is a great opportunity to freeze some side dishes to complete them. We have created several mini meal plans for only seasonal side dishes.
3. Freeze Full Meals
Of course, we can’t end this post without talking about turning your produce into delicious full meals that can be pulled from the freezer whenever you need them. Our plans are already centered around seasonal produce (especially the Real Food, Vegetarian, and Paleo meal plans), but with our MenuBuilder system, you can customize any plan to include the produce that you need to use up. You can search for recipes by an ingredient, but make sure you check out the following posts that highlight the best of each season.
