I’m a summer person. Growing up at the seashore, I became addicted to water sports as a child. More daylight hours energize me. I feel I can, and actually do accomplish more, resulting in a better night’s sleep. I enjoy being able to open a door and go out without having to grab a sweater, jacket or parka but above all I love the abundant seasonal produce. It’s always with renewed sadness that I watch it disappear each fall. I hang onto the freshness as long as possible by cooking the end-of-season yield but eventually, have to admit autumn is here and summer is over. I’m not completely defeated though. I preserve some reminders to enjoy during the cold months ahead by freezing them.
While in the process of preparing this year’s supply of simmer’s food mementos, I thought it might be fun to share my experiences and facts I’ve learned along the way with all of you. I remembered a couple of posts I’d written on the subject in Sept. 2016, looked them up and combined the essence of them both, plus new information I’ve gathered in this post. Please remember, I’m focused on late summer produce here, but the direction can apply to any similar items. For example, freezing snap pea pods and Italian beans is the same procedure as that for green beans I’ll follow this with a post on applications and recipe examples next week.
Several produce items available in late summer can be preserved to have handy during the months ahead. I’m not talking about ‘stocking up for the winter’. That’s far too time and space consuming for today’s lifestyle. This is about having enough of certain products to make a featured dish for a holiday feast, or to serve as occasional reminders of warm, sunny days during cold, snowy ones.
Still, not all of the produce so plentiful in the early fall is suitable for freezing. The best way to tell is to check the glass cases in the supermarkets. If an item isn’t there, it doesn’t commercially flash-freeze well and won’t survive the slower domestic process. This especially applies to things with high water content and soft flesh, tomatoes, plums and eggplant for example. The frozen water content forms crystals which attach to the other frozen elements in their make-up, thaw faster and drain the item of its juice and flavor, leaving a deflated, pulpy mass. These items are better canned, or for tomatoes, optionally, dehydrated, allowing the juices to remain or dry in the flesh, retaining flavor.
You’ll probably think that the best choices from the late summer crops to freeze, green beans, corn and peaches are ‘Ho-hum already done’ and you’d be right. However, I can promise you the difference in texture, flavor and appearance between commercially processed and what you do yourself, will be a happy surprise, no, make that shock.
There are a few tips to simulate the commercial flash-freezing process which help to assure a good result. The difference between treatment of the 4 items discussed here is noted at each step. Of course, they should be cleaned and prepped first; the beans trimmed, any strings removed, the corn husked and silk brushed off, the peaches washed, stems removed.
- For corn and peaches bring a pot of water to a boil, for beans use a skillet.
1) Immerse the beans only until they turn bright green (blanched) about10-15 sec.
2) Dip the peaches about 10-30 sec. until the skins will peel easily
3) Cook the corn on cob about 4 min. until just beginning to tenderize.
- Immediately run cold water over the produce to stop the cooking
- Spread a counter top with paper towels
1) Lay the beans and corn cobs out, separated, to dry
2) Using a sharp knife, peel the skin off the peaches. Do not allow to dry. Start freezing prep.
- Cover cookie sheets with waxed paper
1) Spread the beans out separately on the cookie sheet and freeze
2) Brace the bottom of each corn cob in the center of a tube pan. Using a sharp knife, slice off the kernels, letting them fall into the pan. Spread them evenly over the lined sheet and freeze.
3) Slice the peaches, about 4 per half, directly onto the lined sheet, not overlapping, and freeze.
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Freeze the produce according to your freezer’s rate, usually between 40-60 min.
To Package:
The reason for freezing the produce on cookie sheets is to capture color, freshness and taste. The reason to take pains to be sure there’s no overlapping is to avoid clumping and damage in storing, as well as to make it easy to remove a desired portion. It’s important the packaging maintain these assets.
- Use zip lock bags or square plastic boxes with secure lids, like those used for dinner entrees.
- Do not let the items thaw, package for storage quickly
- Place the items in the containers individually, not overlapping
- If layering is necessary to fill the container, separate them with accordion-like folds of waxed paper-not plastic wrap
1) the corn is best in bags and should be spread to an even thickness
2) The beans can be arranged in a uniform layers in bags or boxes.
3) The peach slices should be placed individually in each layer, and dusted with a thin coating of powdered sugar before being covered with the paper for the next layer, in boxes.
- Make room in the freezer to store these containers flat, even stacked, but never on end, allowing the contents to clump together
Cooking:
Because these items have been blanched and domestically frozen, which takes more time than the commercial flash method, they take a few minutes less time to cook. Here are some general guidelines. Individual recipes follow.
- Normally green beans need 15 min.to steam or boil. These should be checked at about 10 min. frozen, 8 min. thawed. Take about 5 min. off roasting time too.
- It takes about 2 ears of corn for a single serving as a side dish and that’s a lot to freeze. If you have room for this-fine, but if not use this corn to add to casseroles, salads, side combos or even salsa. Done this way it will stand up to cooking in a dish or just being tossed in a salad.*
- The peaches quickly lose their juice when thawed and are best used directly from the freezer. Remember they have a thin coating of sugar and adjust other ingredients accordingly
*I come from a state famous for its white table corn. My Mother-in-Law was a master at freezing it. She taught me the tube pan trick and her winter dinners occasionally featured sides of buttered corn. She froze it in 1 cup bags which she considered a single portion or the amount usually required for adding to 4 portion dishes. She stored the bags in large plastic containers in the freezer. If you’re a corn lover and have access to a lot of it, plus the freezer space, this is the way to go.
Now on to specific freezing tips:
Beans:
Hand select the beans to be frozen, choosing the largest, firmest, straightest ones. This assures even freezing and makes the best presentation later. As stated above, they cook as directed for commercially frozen ones, only for a bit less time, depending on your appliances and can be used in the same ways. Always try to serve these whole; cut beans are too ordinary to be ‘special ‘.
Of course, the easiest and often most attractive way to serve green beans is simply to add toppings. Fresh herbs such as thyme, sage and rosemary are favorite toppings and mushrooms and Karmelized onions are popular add-ins too. Broiled portabellas, sliced, are wonderful, so are button caps first lightly broiled in butter with soy sauce added, then reheated, poured over the beans.
Corn:
Don’t try to freeze corn-on-the-cob. It isn’t that great commercially and even worse domestically. Make sure the ears are silk-free before you cut the kernels off because shreds of silk will mat when frozen and can ruin a dish.
As stated, the best use of the corn is as an addition to another dish, and, of course, that depends on the recipe for the dish. If it’s a cold salad or salsa, dip the bag with the corn into boiling water for about 3 min. then shock under cold. Otherwise just add to the recipe as directed. Using ‘fresh’ corn in salads is a wonderfully refreshing change in winter.
Peaches:
Keep the peaches in the boiling water only long enough to loosen the skin. The riper the peach the less time it takes. Hold the peach on a slotted spoon under cold water, until cool enough to handle; prick it with a paring knife and peel off the skin. Place the peaches on a waxed paper covered flat surface until all the fruit is peeled, then begin slicing each for freezing over the paper covered cookie sheet, making sure the slices don’t touch. Freeze, then lightly dust with powdered sugar as boxed.
When frozen, place the slices in a 4 inch square freezer box. Supermarkets sell these in 3-packs. Place the slices, without touching, in layers and separate the layers with a long strip of waxed paper woven accordion style between layers. Peaches are best used frozen and thawed in a dish’s preparation. Remember in using them that they are lightly sugared and adjust the recipe.
Frozen this way peaches consume more room than packaged in bags, so, unless you have a lot of space, they’re best reserved for accessory dishes like salsas and sauces. If you plan a dish using a quantity of them, like a pie, for a winter event, make it, then freeze it in a metal pan, and bake it frozen, just add about 15 min. to the oven time.
Don’t forget the thawed peach slices can be used by themselves scattered over ice cream, meats, in salads, mixed with winter fruits in compotes and other ways, even over cereal to brighten a dreary winter morning.
Zucchini:
At summer’s end we’re often so focused on the luscious stone fruits, peaches, plums, etc., the big, ripe tomatoes and the sweet yellow corn that we tend to take another currently plentiful produce item for granted– zucchini, which may be the most versatile ‘vegetable’ of all. (Zucchini is actually a fruit, specifically a berry.) It has an interesting history too.
Zucchini is not Italian, but like all squash, native to the Americas. It was brought to Europe centuries ago along with its cousin the yellow squash. Together they were called ‘summer squash’; a name still used for the yellow ones. The Northern Italians, especially the Milanese and Tuscans developed the green squash into the product as we now know it, as well as a golden version, and gave it its present name, which is generally universal, though in England it’s called a ‘Marrow’ and in France a ‘Courgette’. These squash returned to the U.S. in the late 19thcentury but remained relatively unnoticed until after WWW II.
Zucchini is very prolific and there’s often a surplus at the end of the season, even for back-yard gardeners. One partial solution, I’m told, is to eat the flowers before they mature. These are delicious prepared stuffed or fried in recipes readily available especially on the web, but usually there is still over abundance at this time of year.
Due to high water content, zucchini doesn’t freeze well, except by commercial flash-freezing. Whole, it deflates when thawed and slices clump. So how does one avoid wasting the extra? I’ve had some success for short periods, freezing thick slices on a cookie sheet before bagging them or freezing it in a sauced dish like ratatouille. However, one of the best ways to preserve zucchini is to accept the fact that it’s going to change texture, become limp and combine it, with other ingredients, into a ‘base’, which will keep for several months, for future dishes. Food Tips and Cooking Tricks by David Joachim has an excellent recipe for such a base and ideas on how to use it but, of course, once made, you can use it as you please.
Two other summer produce items which I prepare and set aside for winter are watermelon and mint. However, since I don’t freeze either of them, I’m not including them in my ‘Tip’ list this week. I am including them, with full directions in preparing them, in next week’s post when I discuss and list recipes examples for the presentations of these foods.
Watermelon:
Although I don’t freeze watermelon, I do pickle the rind, so I’m including it in my list of things I preserve to remind me of summer during cold winter days.
Mint:
I also preserve mint by pickling, in a sense. I make it into a ‘sauce’ or ‘dressing’ to be used as a flavoring or condiment.
Join me next week to get wonderful recipe suggestions for ways to enjoy these ‘gifts of summer’ all winter.
