The Beginner's Guide to Preserving Food at Home - Janet Chadwick [12]
Root Cellaring (or Cold Storage)
IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE LUCKY PEOPLE who have a storage area that will keep foods cool without freezing them (generally 32°F to 40°F), you can store some fruits (apples, grapefruit, grapes, and pears) and vegetables (shell beans, beets, cabbages, carrots, cauliflower, celery, kohlrabi, onions, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, and green tomatoes) without processing. Or you can temporarily store these vegetables until the rush of the harvest season and the winter holidays is over. With more space in your freezer and many canning jars emptied, you can process apples, beets, carrots, cauliflower, pumpkins, and tomatoes at your leisure.
clean out cellar
assemble containers
pack in containers
STORING IN A ROOT CELLAR: Six Easy Steps
Clean your root cellar or storage area once a year, just before the harvest season. Sweep out the area, scrub all your containers, and leave the area open to air for a few days.
Assemble your containers. Since different fruits and vegetables have different storage requirements — some like it cool and dry, some like it cool and moist — you will need to provide different conditions. Onions, pumpkins, and squash need dry conditions with plenty of air circulation. Root vegetables like it moist; store them in sturdy boxes, barrels, large plastic bags, or crocks. Packing fruits and vegetables in layers of dried leaves, straw, or crumpled newspapers will help absorb excess odors.
Harvest the best produce. Remove any injured or overripe produce and use immediately.
Prepare each vegetable as needed. For winter squash and pumpkins, this means leaving them to dry in the sun. Onions should be dried before storing. Read the sections on individual vegetables for specifics.
Pack the unwashed fruits and vegetables in suitable containers.
Check your stored foods from time to time. Remove any that are beginning to soften or show signs of spoiling. If possible, use immediately or freeze or can.
Freezing
FREEZING MAINTAINS THE NATURAL COLOR, fresh flavor, and high nutritive value of fresh foods. The objective is to bring foods to the frozen state quickly. When properly done, fruits and vegetables are more like fresh than when preserved by any other method. Best of all, freezing is fast and easy.
I had been freezing garden surpluses for years when I began experimenting with the process. I discovered that the old standard method of washing and preparing the vegetables, then blanching, cooling, drying, packing, and freezing them was not always the fastest, easiest way to produce the best finished product. Many vegetables can be frozen without blanching (although their shelf lives in the freezer will be shorter), and greens can be stir-fried instead of blanched for a better product. I’ll go over each method step by step, but first, a few words about organizing your work and getting your packaging materials ready.
tip To prevent injury when slicing vegetables with a manually operated rotary slicer, blade slicer, or slaw slicer, wear a clean cotton garden glove on the hand that is apt to come in contact with the slicing blade.
PACKAGING FROZEN FOODS
Proper packaging is absolutely necessary to prevent freezer burn, oxidation, and formation of large ice crystals.
For freezing most of the vegetables in this book, I strongly recommend using boilable bags. These heavy-duty freezer bags allow you to blanch, cool, freeze, then cook your vegetables right in the bag. They are sealed with an automatic sealer or your own electric flat iron. It is very important that you use bags the manufacturer specifies as boilable since many plastic food storage bags are not suitable for heating.
Other freezer packaging materials you can use are freezer paper, heavy foil, widemouthed freezer jars with straight sides (for easy removal of frozen foods), rigid plastic containers, and plastic freezer bags. Square freezer