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The best way to keep to store
valerieroberts
Posts: 726
in Fruit & veg
Bumper crops of French beans ,spinach, black currants, cherries. What is the most viltamin retaining way to store these for the bleak days of winter. i have a freezer but last year the apricots did not do well in there as they went brown when they were defrosted. Any advise most welcome.
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Some fruits can't be frozen successfully, and I think whole apricots are one of them. I think they can be frozen, but you need to halve and stone them first, add some ascorbic acid solution and then freeze them in sugar syrup. It's probably a good idea to think about those fruits which are sold as "frozen food" and that'll give you an idea as to what works and what doesn't. e.g. raspberries freeze well uncooked, but strawberries don't! There are other ways of preserving things of course - for example, I bottle damsons and make jam sometimes with other soft fruit. Vegetables need blanching first, and then cooling in iced water, then well-drained before packing in small-ish plastic bags. Once again, think about what's available in supermarkets as regards whether or not to freeze whole e.g. French beans whole and runner beans sliced. I'm sure the commercial producers have experimented a lot over the years to see what works best!
If you grow lots of fruit and vegetables it's probably worthwhile to buy a book about freezing things - I have a very old one called "Home Guide to Deep Freezing" by Audrey Ellis, but I don't know if you could buy it now! Charity shops often have quite a good range of old cookery books, so I think that's where I'd look first.
Thank you that's really understandable when You thank about it. I have some kilner jars that I can pack with fruit, done th,is way, cherres loose something certainly. So will try the apricots in there this year. We are trying to cut down on sugar. By the way, why do you have to blanch veges and does this apply to fruit as well - perhaps the apricots would have been better had I blanched them. Busy time ahead
Hello again - I had to look up the reason for blanching in the old book I have! This is what it says ",,,,Blanch: to heat vegetables in boiling water, or to steam just long enough to slow or stop enzyme action".
I don't think you need to blanch fruit, but if freezing apples for example, the book recommends slicing them straight into a container part-filled with a cold 40% syrup. I only freeze cooked apple anyway i.e. not quite to the puree stage, but what I'd call "stewed" a bit. I thaw it and use it in pies, or apple flan with a bit of grated lemon rind and some sugar to taste. For the flan, I cover the thawed apple with thinly sliced raw eating apples and then cook it. When it's cooked I brush some melted apricot jam over the top whilst it's still warm from the oven. It cools to make a lovely-looking glaze. Delicious too.
Even if you freeze fruit in sugar/sugar syrup, you can discard this before eating the fruit, so increased sugar consumption shouldn't be too much of an issue. It seems as though the sugar acts as a kind of preservative and the fruit itself doesn't absorb much of it anyway.
Good luck!
p.s. the book I referred to was published in 1968!
What you want is the book AFRC Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables published by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Women's Institute - it covers every imaginable way of preserving your garden produce including bottling, salting, freezing and pickling - available on Amazon from £0.01 to £8.95
An invaluable mine of information
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Many thanks for such a lot of facts and ideas. When you say the sugar in fruit preserves it I i wonder if I could use salt on veg to preserve it instead of the heavy work load of blanching. looking up the book from Amazon right now.
Here's to good growing and cooking
For anyone interested, there is only one book left of the above at Amazon
I use 'The Complete Book of Home Food Preservation' by Cyril Grange, first published by Cassell in 1947. My copy dates from 1949 and belonged to my mother. It is well worn and covered in splashes, tells you how to preserve just about anything edible and is my bible for all bottling, jams and marmalades.There are pages of recipes, all the ones I have tried work.
When we were younger we used to holiday regularly in France in the Loire valley and would stop off in Chartres on the way home, not just for the fabulous cathedral, but for its wonderful market where we bought whole trays of apricots, pears and Mirabelles at ridiculous prices. The day or two after we got home were spent bottling these for happy holiday memories all year.
Well, you can preserve runner beans in jars in salt - Ma used to do it way back - not sure how good the resulting produce is for the blood pressure tho' ? She changed to freezing as soon as freezers became available.
I don't blanch runner beans, just prep and slice and freeze in 'meal sized' bags.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I suppose to blanch or not to blanch depends on how long you think you will be before the produce is needed. Before I thought about it I put packs and packs individually in the freezer. Seems the best thing to do would be to blanch (when I receive my book on how to ) for the long term. Half the work load, it's the pans of boiling water that is daunting. Everyone is now talking about less sugar and less salt, there will be an answer eventually. Such a lot of fun in the meantime growing it.
Drying? See Katherine W's thread on alternative uses for greenhouse!