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Fresh Vegetables All Year Long
In this section you’ll find complete information on the most popular ways to store, preserve, freeze, or process vegetables for later use, including:
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- How to pick and process vegetables for storage or preserving.
- How to home can fruit and vegetables from your garden.
- How to prepare, package, and freeze vegetables for later use.
- How to pickle vegetables using vinegar-brine processing methods.
- How to make berry and fruit preserves, jams, and jellies.
- How to dehydrate and dry fresh fruit and vegetables for long-term storage.
- How to store vegetables in a cool, dark space or in your home’s refrigerator.
Storing and Preserving Vegetables
Everyone likes to grow vegetables to pick fresh from the garden at the peak of flavor. Many gardeners use easy preserving, drying and freezing methods to enjoy garden-fresh flavors all year long. Store and preserve your fruit, berries, greens and produce for delicious use later in your favorite vegetable recipes and meals.
There are many techniques from which to choose for preserving most vegetables, including refrigerating, storing, dehydrating, brining, pickling, curing and freezing.
Best When Fresh. Some garden vegetables such as berries, corn, English peas, and radishes begin losing taste and texture from the moment that they are picked. There’s no substitute for eating them fresh.
Store for Later Use. Many other vegetables, including roots and tubers, winter squash, pumpkin, and sweet potato, can be stored successfully. Extend their fresh taste into meals served in autumn and winter.
Storing fresh vegetables requires sorting them into groups depending on the conditions they need.
Choose a dark, warm, dry spot for gourds, winter melons, potatoes, pumpkins, and squash—about 55–65°F (13–18°C) is right.
Cool and dry is the best choice for sun-dried vegetables, including beans, peas, peppers, and tomatoes, and for dried and dehydrated chives, garlic, leeks, onion, and shallots. For them, the temperature should be 40–50°F (4–10°C).
A household refrigerator’s vegetable keeper is the best spot for produce that needs cool and moist storage, including green beans, cucumbers, eggplants, melons, okra, peppers, and summer squash.
As another option, store asparagus, beets, broccoli, cabbage, celery, leafy greens, leeks, lettuce, green onions, fresh peas, radishes, and rhubarb in moist conditions, at temperatures from 34–38°F (1–3°C), as in a porous paper bag placed in the lower areas of a home refrigerator.
Brine or Pickle. Vegetables such as cabbage or cucumber can be pickled or preserved and fermented in brine.
Dry. Store and preserve vegetables are dehydration and drying.
Can. Pressure-can some produce in glass jars or make jellies, jams, and chutneys.
Freeze. With some preparation, blanch, pack, and freeze fresh vegetables for later use [see Preparing Vegetables for Freezing].
Experts agree that deep-freezing at very low temperatures in a vacuum is the best way to store fresh vegetables. Freezing preserves vegetables for periods as long as 6 months. Gone are the efforts associated with hot brines and syrups, pressure cookers, or the effort of home canning.
Any firm-fleshed vegetable that can be cut into small pieces, mashed, or pureed is suitable for freezing. Blanching—the pre-freezing step of plunching prepared vegetables into boiling water for 1–2 minutes—helps retain optimum flavor and texture. After draining, pack them into vacuum-sealed plastic bags and quick-freeze them to 0°F (–18°C).
Drying and Freezing Vegetables
While pickling or home canning are traditional ways of preserving fresh and processed or cooked vegetables, today drying and freezing are two simpler and more popular choices.
Drying vegetables uses a dehumidifier or low heat and air circulation to remove water from many fruits and vegetables. Once dehydrated completely and sealed in a vacuum bag, they are shelf stable for many months.
Freezing is an even more popular preservation method. Its advantages are that it is quick and it preserves nearly all the nutrition and most of the taste of the food. Frozen vegetables may be used over a period of several months but are best when consumed before six months.