Although I’ve written about freezing foods in the past, I feel it’s necessary to bring it up again with the cool season approaching. Freezing has the potential to save on your budget, but you always have to be on the lookout for what is available. Shopping the sales, using coupons, and preparing home cooked meals nets us tremendous savings, but figuring out what to do with the these items once we return home is where we will see the savings.
We all have in our mind or in our price book our ideal maximum price we would like to pay for an item. Once the item finally goes on sale and it’s at just the right price we pounce on it like a wild animal searching out its prey.
The key to using your freezer is to chop up vegetables for particular dishes or vegetables you know you use on a regular basis or that will enable you to make a variety of meals. Find these items on sale and then get to work with your cutting board, a good sharp knife, and of course high quality freezer bags.
- Red onions. Diced red onions are a great base for marinara sauce, tasty in omelets or quiches, and good for sauteeing to use in just about any dish.
- White onions. Diced white onions are a great starter for any meal and having these frozen enables you to quick-start most meals without the standard prep work. Put some butter or olive oil in a pan, grab your bag of pre-diced onions and you are on your way. Throw some of these in a crockpot with some salt, pepper, beans, and water and 8 hours later you’ve got something to eat.
- Mirepoix. Diced celery, carrots, and onions will be a good starter for any soup, stew, gumbo, or even an Italian dish. Having this in bags will start meals in minutes.
- Parsley. I chop parsley, both curly and flat leaf, and freeze it on a regular basis because we can just grab it and we’ve got an immediate tasty garnish.
- Turnips and Parsnips. We’re now getting into a different area. These are strong root vegetables that our family just started eating occasionally in the past few years after seeing a number of cooks use them on the Food Network. It’s hard to find these on sale in our area.
- Green and Red Peppers. We chop these up for use in rice dishes, omelets, Italian sauces, chili, and the list goes on and on.
Using your eagle eye to find these items on sale and then taking initiative to dice, chop, and bag them will not only save you money, but it will also give you a big variety of vegetables to use to start quick meals. For most people, the main hurdle to cooking is that they just don’t feel like it when they come home from work. On my husband’s nights to cook, sometimes he just looks in the freezer and gets an idea. I do the same. The season is coming up for comfort foods and all of these vegetables are good starter kits.
Tags: Comfort Food, Freezing Vegetables, Mirepoix
I don’t freeze much, so i’m not sure what is needed to do to prep some veggies for freezing. Are there any that are not good for freezing? Do any need to be blanched for texture integrity? I know some that aren’t good such as cucumbers and lettuce of course just not sure about carrots, fresh green beans, squash, zuchinni… I have a mini freezer but haven’t used it in so long. I am kicking myself for missing a lot of sales. If you or anyone has tips please let me know. All info is appreciated. Fruits too!
We honestly don’t do any blanching here, but I came across this site http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze/blanching.html. It has some great information and I may start using the techniques myself. We frequently freeze celery, onions, parsley, cilantro, and carrots without blanching and it doesn’t seem to make a difference in taste. I tried to freeze zucchini one time, but it was a big soggy mess when it thawed out. I’m sure squash would be the same. I haven’t tried green beans yet, but I bet if they were blanched they would be awesome. I keep almost any kind of nut in my freezer so that they don’t go rancid, but I haven’t tried any fruit yet.
Thank you very much for the info and link. I cook dinner just about every night and need ways to be prepared and cost effective at the same time. Eating out happens a few times a month with our busy schedules, but being prepared for quick meals prior to an event is much more healthy and less expensive. We aren’t onion people so I will be sticking to onion powder which is always easy to keep on hand. As far as fruit the only things I have personally froze are peaches, strawberries and wild blackberries from our property they have turned out just fine when cooking or adding sugar too after thawing for angel food cake. Thanks again. Your site is very informative.
Your welcome Mandie. Glad you were able to find the site and thank you for checking it out. My kids aren’t fond of onions either, I usually don’t tell them it’s in there unless they ask.