Oh, sure, freezing is nothing special. Everybody throws stuff in the freezer. But for preserving summer’s bounty, there are some important tricks to freezing. Since the cell walls of vegetables tend to rupture in the freezer, you can’t just put whole tomatoes or basil or chard leaves into a freezer bag and call it a day. Prep work is important.
Mostly, I try to to take advantage of the ruptured-cell phenomenon and freeze things that are meant to be kind of mushy anyway. With my chard, I sauteed the stems with onions and then added the chopped leaves along with some tomato sauce, and let the whole mess simmer a bit. This mixture, which is halfway between a sauce and a stew, went into sandwich-size plastic bags so I can defrost individual portions. I did the same thing with a large batch of ratatouille.
And then, of course, there’s frozen pesto, which I make a lot of. My latest batch was an experiment that used Thai and lemon basils instead of Italian. I’m thinking I’ll use it in the traditional ways (pasta, pizza, etc), but maybe also mixed with coconut milk and spices as a kind of green curry sauce.
first time I hear about this ruptured-cell phenomenon. I will have to look into it, as Im freezing constantly (toamtos and peppers mostly). thanks for this tip.
We freeze tomatoes, but they’re destined for sauce or soup, so as you said, the mushiness doesn’t matter. We tend to make our tomato sauce in the winter when it’s more pleasant to have something cooking on the stove for so long.
My mother-in-law used to just put whole tomatoes straight in the freezer when she didn’t have time to do anything else with them. The only drawback to this method is they take a long time to defrost.
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