Tuesday, July 26, 2011

One Thing To Do With Those Pecks Of Peppers

Do you remember how expensive produce was last winter?? Even in a normal year, I regularly have to pay between $2-3 per red bell pepper in January. That's both ridiculous and completely unnecessary.


Peppers from my garden



If you have access to a bunch of garden-fresh peppers, it couldn't be easier to freeze them for future use.


I like to cut the top off the pepper and then scoop out the seeds. Next, I cut the pepper in half and pop the pieces in a freezer bag. That's it! You can cut the peppers into smaller pieces before freezing, but I prefer to freeze halves so I can customize the size of pepper pieces for each dish. I simply grab the number of pepper halves that I need for the recipe and throw the rest back in the freezer. It only takes a minute or two of thawing before the peppers will be soft enough to cut with a chef's knife.


I also freeze jalapenos, poblanos, and other peppers using this method.





One of these days, I'll break out the dehydrator and try my hand it dehydrating peppers. But until then, to the freezer they go.


4 comments:

  1. Wow, thanks Emily. I routinely freeze avocado but would never have thought of that! I'm hoping I can do something similar with tomatoes as they are currently $12.99/kg here which is roughly $5/lb. Have you got any tomato preserving tips please?

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  2. Hi Kat! Hopefully my tomatoes will ripen soon and I'll be able to post on this. Generally I can tomatoes but this year I'm going to try dehydrating them also. I have heard about freezing tomatoes, but I've never tried it personally.

    Emily

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  3. I like to keep bell peppers, onions and celery (all chopped) in the freezer all year round. Besides saving money, it's a time saver!

    I also have a bag full of frozen whole tomatoes. I threw them in the freezer skin, core and all. I use them in soups, just toss them in frozen and fish out the hard core later. Or you can thaw them before using, the skins and core come right off!

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  4. I like to chop up the peppers into smaller sized pieces and freeze them on a cookie sheet. When frozen, I then place them into quart jars on my freezer door so I can grab a quick handful to toss into any dish I choose. If you don't freeze them before putting them into the jars then you will have a solid clump of peppers instead of individual pieces. I do the same thing with chopped onions. It isn't hard to chop two onions up as long as you have the knife and cutting board out. What a time saver for me.

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