Freezing food is probably the easiest way to keep it, but it still takes some work. For the most part, you'll want to prepare the food to go from freezer to stove or microwave to the table without much work, so do the sorting, cleaning, chopping, slicing and/or saucing and other preparatory work, before you freeze it. Food can be frozen whole, of course, or in large pieces, like a half a large zucchini frozen with the intention of stuffing it before it's cooked.
Lettuce, green onions, cucumbers, radishes and most other salad types of vegetables do not freeze well. Root vegetables like potatoes can be frozen partly cooked, but don't freeze them raw. To freeze potatoes, slice, dice or prepare as for hashbrowns or french fries. Spread them on a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 400 for about half the time it would take to bake through at your elevation.Cool and package.
Many vegetables need to be blanched to stop the ripening process before they're frozen. Food that can be frozen without blanching or other treatment include peppers, celery, mature onions, tomatoes and most herbs.
Blanching is simply putting food into briskly boiling water for a specified amount of time. The easiest way to blanch food is in a pot with a wire basket, but you can dip it out with a slotted spoon, or pour it out into a colander when the time is up. If you're processing several batches of the same food, dipping it out or using a basket to lift it out makes more sense because you can reuse the same water several times over.
Use a large pot and fill it 2/3 full of water and put it on to boil. The water should be boiling briskly when you put the food in and it should come back to a boil in about a minute. After it comes back to a boil, start counting time. If it takes longer than that, either the water wasn't as hot as it should have been or too much food was put into the pot.The denser the food, the longer blanching time it takes. Be sure to follow the directions for each food.
When time is up, remove the food from the boiling water, and cool quickly by either running cool tap water over it or dipping it in ice water. This stops the cooking process and allows the food to freeze faster. As soon as it's cool enough to handle, package it and put it in the freezer.
Blanching Food to Freeze
