steamed vegetables / vegetable soup

neugebauer52

We have a farmer's market nearby so I bought: carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, spinach, celery and cabbage. Cut it, sliced it a steamed it - first the more solid stuff, finally the spinach. Let it cool down and put individual portions into fridge and freezer. Ideal for a quick lunch with chicken etc.

livingleanlivingclean

If I'm going to heat green/non starchy vegies, and want to freeze them, I don't bother pre cooking - I find they soften a lot on defrosting and cook easily, rather than cooked frozen vegies turning to complete mush when reheated.

rockymir

livingleanlivingclean wrote: »

If I'm going to heat green/non starchy vegies, and want to freeze them, I don't bother pre cooking - I find they soften a lot on defrosting and cook easily, rather than cooked frozen vegies turning to complete mush when reheated.

This.
Also it seems as freezing first shortens the cooking time. The only problem is some items like cabbage are a lot bulkier raw than cooked so there it depends how much space is available in the freezer.

DX2JX2

trimi1104 wrote: »

livingleanlivingclean wrote: »

If I'm going to heat green/non starchy vegies, and want to freeze them, I don't bother pre cooking - I find they soften a lot on defrosting and cook easily, rather than cooked frozen vegies turning to complete mush when reheated.

This.
Also it seems as freezing first shortens the cooking time. The only problem is some items like cabbage are a lot bulkier raw than cooked so there it depends how much space is available in the freezer.

Freezing breaks down cell structure. This is why green leafy vegetables tend to get mushy/soft when thawed. Oddly enough, cooking tends to do the same thing. If you take a look at a couple of different recipes for stuffed cabbage rolls, you'll find that some recipes call for the cabbage to be blanched in boiling water in order to soften them for stuffing/rolling. Other recipes simply call for you to put the head of cabbage into the freezer and then to let it thaw before stuffing/rolling.

If cooking green leafy vegetables in a soup or something, it's fine to cook it before freezing. The freezing won't do anything more to the greens (since they're already well broken down).

That said, if just storing raw greens for later use I don't bother freezing since they're so quick to cook and they last quite a while in the fridge if properly stored anyway.

Lounmoun

neugebauer52 wrote: »

We have a farmer's market nearby so I bought: carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, spinach, celery and cabbage. Cut it, sliced it a steamed it - first the more solid stuff, finally the spinach. Let it cool down and put individual portions into fridge and freezer. Ideal for a quick lunch with chicken etc.

If it makes you happy that is great. Sounds like you got a good haul!

I store raw uncut celery, carrots and cabbage in my refrigerator for a couple of weeks though and it is fine. I have blanched and frozen cabbage before for later use in recipes when I had a lot.