blanching veg for the freezer

[ACE]

We have been running down the freezer contents to get ready for the glut  (fingers crossed) I have always plunged in boiling water to blanch them but We have a new super duper steamer now so I decided to look up steaming to blanch and find it is the preferred method. Makes sense really as it is a bit hit and miss with the pan of boiling water. Steam should give an equal heat right through the batch and the trays can be lowered into the icy water and set to drain without loads of utensils littering up the kitchen. With ours having a timer, even easier.  If you are like me and are likely to get distracted or nod off, the timed steamer is an essential bit of kit.

[ACE]

[Vinlander]

If you need another reason to buy a steamer then consider how awful the results are if you boil broccoli that's even slightly past its time (whether you have overlooked it on the plot or in the fridge) - absolutely vile mushy mess - mainly because the more delicate semi-blown florets have had all their flavour washed out by the water.

On the other hand, a less-than-perfect head given a light steaming produces broccolli that tastes as good as the fresh stuff (better compared to the supermarket stuff) and still looks enough like broccoli to serve to guests even if it was showing yellow when it went in.

You may need to remove more stem because the florets need less cooking and that may leave the stems underdone - you might as well boil the better stems while you are steaming the rest.

On the subject of timers - they are well worth it but some work by how much water you put in - then reacting to the heater overheating when the water runs out - very very fiddly and really quite scary.

The most important thing about a timer is the bell - you don't want to leave stuff in there to overcook - it needs to come out ASAP.

If you have the non-ticking kind of steamer I'd recommend a separate bell timer so you can stop it before it boils dry - you can sometimes buy them for £1 and anyway even the expensive ones need a re-calibration. I find them less fuss than setting my phone alarm.

Cheers.

[Plot22]

In the past we have blanched everything from the allotment that we freeze. Last year we did not blanch parsnips they started to go brown, peas just soaked in salty water to kill anything still left in them, nor broccoli bits shead all over the place. We continued to blanch brussels, carrots and broad beans . To be honest we have noticed an improvement in cooking our non blanch vegetables so we will continue at least for this year.

[Tee Gee]

I seem to recall reading a book on "freezing garden produce" around fifty years ago when I got into allotmenteering and it said that produce you intend to keep in a frozen state  for less than six months did not need blanching, whereas stuff that was to be stored longer should be!

Needless to say we rarely blanched anything.

Add to that we found with frozen stuff that perhaps we hadn't got round to eating yet was always Ok even on the odd occasion after a couple of years storage.

I abosultely hate sprouts that have been cooked after being frozen choose how long they have been stored, add to that the smell they give off is totally abnoxious

But then again the smell might have been down to 'not blanching' and the smell was from rotting enzymes that had not been killed off had they been blanched!

The choice is yours in my opinion!

[ancellsfarmer]

Regarding the freezing, it's the speed that you can reduce the temperature that influences the quality of the produce when defrosted. Rapid freezing creates only tiny ice crystals whereas if frozen down slowly the crystals form slowly and are each larger. This causes the food to expand and when thawed, is 'mushy', stretched by the ice.
Commercially, crops are cryogenically frozen in a torrent of liquid nitrogen at hurricane speeds-blast frozen.
At home ,remove as much air as possible by almost submerging packs in cold water and then seal.The best practice is to cool the crop, then freeze small packs a few at a time, ideally in a seperate freezer already at minimum temperature(region of -20deg C, if you're lucky)
Move them frozen into the storage freezer, continue to freeze until the batch is complete.
Only freeze the prime of the crop, tough broccoli does not magically become young again!
I do not generally 'blanch' ,but only freeze limited amounts. My freezer space is really for game, fish and supermarket meat ' big bargs', (one day short of expiry!)

[small]

I stopped blanching veg years ago and haven't noticed any difference, but I don't grow sprouts so can't comment on that. Both runner and french beans, peas, asparagus, carrots, parsnips, JA's, all seem fine: I open freeze on a tray then bag stuff up tightly. Maybe I'm either just lucky or lacking sensitive taste buds!