Freezing fresh vegetables

[Ellen aka Snow White]

After all this rain our garden is producing ALOT of vegs! I have frozen vegs before but I never have good results with squash. It gets all mushy when it is thawed. Does anyone know a way to preserve squash without it getting mushy? Thanks!

 

[piratesmate]

Squash was always a problem for me, too. I used to bake it in whatever form we were going to eat it (like zucchini bread, casserole, etc) & freeze that.

Unfortunately, it's always really hot when they need to be harvested & my kitchen has no a/c...so I didn't do it often.

Mostly I just tried to pick it really young so there wasn't as much to use.

 

[wtpclc]

My mom used to shred zuchini and freeze to use in bread later. I do not know of any other goods methods, though. Good luck!

 

[piratesmate]

Actually, now that wtpclc mentions it, I used to do that too. However, shredding it creates quite a bit of fluid. I'd always drain it before freezing, but it would still be very wet after defrosting it & I'd need to drain it again. I always thought it was marginal at best, so I stopped doing it. My mother still did it that way, though.

 

[piratesmate]

A couple links about this:

http://theswap.com/cookbook2/sefer.cgi?display:964288199-25857.txt

http://southernfood.about.com/library/weekly/aa082497.htm

http://www.msue.msu.edu/msue/imp/mod01/01600649.html