Healthy Food Ideas

Posted By admin on September 7, 2009

Our garden is overflowing with broccoli and cauliflower and there is just so much you can eat before looking for ways to preserve it for later use. One of those ways is to freeze cauliflower or broccoli and store it up to 9 months in the freezer. You’ll want to pick only just ripened vegetables to freeze, any vegetables that are past have black spots and are not suitable for freezing.

Remove leaves and thicker stems from vegetable and cut into pieces for stir fry’s or other dish sizes. Dunk the cut broccoli or cauliflower in a bowl of warm water which will dislodge any dirt and bugs. Bugs and spiders don’t like the warm water and will crawl out of the vegetable if there are any.

Drain and then dunk the whole bunch into boiling water for 3 minutes, making sure the water covers them. At exactly 3 minutes drain them quickly and dump them into either a bowl of cold water or a bowl of ice water which stops them from cooking. Once they have thoroughly cooled strain them again and let them sit until most of the water is off of them. Before you place in freezer bags shake florets in the sink to get excess water off. The more water you get off the less ice crystals and the better they freeze. Before sealing the freezer bag squeeze out any air which will also helps to eliminate ice crystals. Immediately place bags in freezer in single layer so they freeze quickly.

The frozen broccoli or cauliflower can go from freezer to pan without thawing in stir fry’s or other dishes. Cook these the same way you would cook frozen vegetables from the store.

Categories: Recipes, Save Money Grow at Home
Tags: freeze broccoli, freeze cauliflower, frozen broccoli