You can imagine, then, how thrilled I was when I got a call from Therese Madden, a reporter for WHYY in Philadelphia, who wanted to do a radio piece on freezing vegetables. The piece aired this morning, but you can also catch a listen here. What excites me about freezing vegetables is how utterly easy is it. In most cases, you blanch the vegetables, cool them off, stick them in a bag, and toss them in the freezer. Some vegetables, like peppers and corn, don’t even really need to be blanched. If you’re feeling fastidious (and I encourage this), you’ll keep a list of what you’ve got in there so you’ll remember to eat it later. And that’s it.

There are only so many ways to say “blanch, cool, bag, freeze,” so rather than repeat myself, I’ll link back to some older posts where I give this same advice, but with pictures. (oooh! ahhh! Oh, wait. They’re just pictures of freezer bags. Still: Illustrations!)

Beet greens, turnip greens, and greens in general (the last with a discussion of canning and dehydrating, too)
How to Freeze Pesto
Green Beans
Applesauce vs. Applesauce (hint: applesauce wins)

Enjoy, and happy harvesting!

So, what to do with it? Put it on pasta, obviously. But it also makes an excellent sandwich spread (particularly with cheese and roasted peppers, also from the freezer), a nice garnish for soup, and a reliable companion for cheese. Pretty much anything you use fresh pesto for, you can use frozen pesto for. Just be sure to check your label to see whether you need to add cheese and nuts.

One last thing, and then on to one of my favorite ways to eat it: don’t be alarmed if the top of the jar has a thin layer or black, or at least darkened, basil. This is a normal effect of oxidation. Depending on how much oil you used, it might not happen at first, but it will if you only use, say, half the jar. It doesn’t affect the taste too much, but if it bothers you, just scrape it off.

On to business!

Pasta with Pesto and Squash

4 oz. frozen pesto, thawed
1 medium butternut squash
1 T. olive oil
Salt
3/4 lb. penne (I like wheat, but whatever floats your boat)
Pecorino Romano or other hard cheese for serving

1. Preheat the oven to 425°. Trim and peel the squash; cut into 3/4″ cubes. Toss the cubes with the oil and a bit of salt and roast for about 25 minutes. You want them chewable and maybe just a touch carmelized, but not burnt. (Throw in some garlic if you want).

2. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to boil. When the squash has about 10 minutes to go, start the pasta. Cook until al dente. Drain, reserving about 1/4 c. of pasta water, and return both to the pot.

3. Toss the pasta, the pasta water, the pesto, and the squash. Add more salt and oil if necessary. Serve and top with grated cheese.

Notes: This assumes that you froze your pasta con cheese and nuts. If not, you need to add them. To see this as an opportunity, rather than an annoyance, try varying the cheese. This is particularly nice with goat cheese.

I like so many things about this book that it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing. If I had to narrow it down, I’d point to the author’s focus on ingredients rather than method. There’s been so much excitement about canning over the past year—enthusiasm that I share!—that I think some people are missing the point. The point of canning is not just to assemble a pretty pantry, or to recover lost skills, or display hipster credentials. It’s definitely not about making life harder, contrary to the advice offered in one odd little not-quite-a-cookbook. Ultimately, we can to preserve food. And there’s the rub. Canning is not the only, or even the best, way to preserve many foods. Vegetables freeze well; peppers are terrific dried; cabbage was seemingly made for sauerkraut.

Once you get the hang of food preservation, you start to develop a sixth sense for what method might work best for any given food item. You also develop preferences for what you like to eat and how you like to spend your time in the kitchen. Unfortunately, most food preservation handbooks focus on technique, with long sections on water-bath canning, pressure canning, pickling, freezing, and dehydrating. This is great if you’re looking for an introduction to how to make pickles. It’s not so helpful if you’ve got 30 pounds of tomatoes and need to know the pros and cons of freezing vs. canning vs. dehydrating. Vinton’s section on cherries, for instance, includes instructions and recipes for frozen cherries, a sweet refrigerator sauce, a shelf-stable cherry bourbon infusion, dehydrated cherry leather, basic dried cherries, a savory cherry-walnut relish for canning (really a pickle), and cherry preserves. It’s really the most useful and versatile book I’ve seen for people who are dabbling in food preservation because they want to transition to a local foods lifestyle. And everything I’ve made from it is delicious.

My only complaint? It’s too short! I’m as excited about the next person about pickled ramps, but where’s the eggplant? And I do so sorely wish someone would break the ban on pressure canning in “mainstream” canning books. But these are small complaints. It’s really terrific, and if you don’t win the giveaway, you might want to buy it.

So about that giveaway? Leave a comment describing a new technique that you’ve explored this year by Friday, September 24. And—though it’s not required to enter the giveaway—it would really make our day if you could “like” us on Facebook! Just click through and join the party.

So what is a goat to do? Turn to Twitter, of course. Last year, zoecancan was kind enough to point me to an incredibly helpful article in the peer-reviewed journal Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. Since it’s behind a paywall, I’ve reproduced the abstract below:

Three studies were conducted to evaluate the safety of tomatillos and products containing tomatillos canned by the water-bath processing method. In the first study, plain tomatillos were processed for 25, 37.5, 50 and 62.5 min. In the second study, five tomatillo/onion combinations were prepared while five tomatillo/green chile combinations were prepared in the third study. pH evaluations were conducted to determine safety in all studies using pH 4.2 as the cut-off value. No differences in the pH of plain tomatillos were detected due to processing time. All jars of plain tomatillos had pH values below 4.1. All combinations of tomatillos/onions and tomatillos/green chile containing more than 50% tomatillo had pH values below the 4.2 cut-off value. Results of the three studies indicate (1) acidification of plain tomatillos is probably unnecessary for canning by the water-bath processing method and (2) combinations of acidic tomatillos and low-acid onions or green chile must contain more than 50% tomatillos to have a pH low enough for safe water-bath processing.

So, based on this, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it’s safe to water-bath can this version of salsa verde, or in fact any version of salsa verde where the quantity of tomatillos (by weight) exceeds the combined weight of onions and/or peppers and herbs. The acid safety cut-off is a pH of 4.6, so at 4.1, this is plenty acidic (remember that a lower pH means higher acidity).

For the recipe, along with instructions for water-bath canning (for the scientific), pressure canning (for the conservative), or freezing (for the squeamish), click here. This time, 2 pounds made 4 half-pints. It scales up, so, if you’ve got a bushel full of tomatillos, knock yourself out!

You’ve got three basic options: freezing, dehydrating, or canning. More ambitious folks can try fermenting, like I did with my bumper crop of bok choi last year. But let’s stick with the basics here.

Freezing Greens

This is the easiest, and probably the best, solution. It’s very, very easy to freeze greens. You just blanch them, cool them in an ice bath, and freeze. I’ve got step-by-step instructions and photos here. Assuming you’ve got a good freezer, these will keep very well for a year. We used ours all winter in soups, stews, pastas, dips, and even just sauteed with garlic. They shrink dramatically when blanched—plan on about a pound of fresh greens to make about two cups.

For most people, this is the way to go. If, however, you have limited freezer space, you live in an area that experiences frequent power outages, or are planning for a future without electricity, you need other options. Alas, they’re not great. But, you asked, so here goes.

Dehydrating Greens

Are you one of those people who likes to sprinkle seaweed flakes over your rice bowl at the local health food store? Then you might like this. Steam your greens just until they’re wilted. Transfer them to dehydrator trays and dry at a low temperature (say, 110ºF) just until they’re crispy. You’ll want to keep an eye on them—within two hours, mine looked like this:

Now what, you may ask, would you do with dehydrated turnip greens? That’s an excellent question. I rehydrated some with a little bit of room temperature water, and they looked pretty good. The problem was that they had no perceptible taste. In the end, I crumbled them up and stuck them in a spice jar:

I sprinkled an entire leaf’s worth of flakes over a bowl of roasted potatoes and couldn’t tell they were there. I suspect that they’re still fairly nutritious, though, so maybe this isn’t such a bad way to incorporate hearty greens into your diet. I guess.

Canning Greens

The things I do for science.

Yes, it is possible to can hearty greens. It requires a pressure cooker and a processing time of 1 hour, 10 minutes for pints and 1 hour, 30 minutes for quarts. Yes, you read that right. And after you’ve subjected these poor, innocent vegetables to 240ºF to more than an hour, you get this appetizing product:

(And that’s the glamor shot.)

The nutritional value of all of this is questionable. They taste about like you would expect them to. If, however, you have absolutely no other options and feel strongly about having a pantry full of shelf-stable vegetables, this technique will serve you well. But Lordy, do they smell bad. Here’s how you do it.

1) Bring about 3 quarts of water to a boil. You need 2 quarts for the pressure canner, plus some extra to pour over the greens.
2) Steam the greens until wilted. Cut them into manageable pieces.

3) Stuff the greens into canning jars. Add 1/2 t. salt per jar (optional) and cover with boiling water, leaving 1″ headspace. Don’t forget to remove the air bubbles. Adjust two-piece lids.
4) Transfer the jars to a rack on a pressure canner. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water. Lock the lid into place, but do not place the regulator on the steam vent. Turn on the heat and exhaust steam from the vent for 10 minutes. Then place the regulator on the steam vent and bring the canner to 10 pounds of pressure. Start timing once the regulator starts rocking—70 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts. (If this is confusing, see the step-by-step directions, with pictures, in this post.)
5) Turn off the heat and let the pressure drop of its own accord. When the pressure has dropped, remove the regulator. Now open all your windows. After waiting a few more minutes, open the lid away from your body. The pungent aroma of overcooked turnip greens will fill your house, and you’ll have all the shelf-stable greens you want. Plan on 2 to 5 pounds per pint, depending on the kind of greens involved. Um, yum?

Other ideas?

My favorite strawberry farm, Gaventa’s, no longer offers U-pick. Waaaah. My next favorite strawberry farm, Mood’s, apparently isn’t offering strawberries this year, but plans to open for other fruit picking in mid-June. That left Johnson’s, a weirdly tourist-y place in Medford that I don’t particularly recommend as a “farm experience” (enforced hayrides = bad, in my book), but the price was right ($1.75/pound for more than 10 pounds) and the berries were DELICIOUS. But here’s the kicker: they wanted $4.95 for pick-your-own cherries. Um, no.

For that, we headed over to Rowand’s Farm in Glassboro. Now this is a U-pick I can live with. The proprietors sit in lawn chairs and hand you plastic buckets. Sweet cherries are $1.65/pound. They also have strawberries, but I can’t vouch for them, having already gorged myself at Johnson’s. But there’s a catch: they’re closed on Saturdays.

Once you bring all that fruit home, then you have to do something with it. Some options and recommendations from last year’s blog:

Freeze it, individually (not particularly recommended, but convenient) or in sugar
Make endless jars of jam, including my favorite, cherry raspberry
Can it with rhubarb
Combine it with lemons for a marmalade
Stash it in syrup
Dehydrate it

Julia over at What Julia Ate highly recommends drowning fruit in alcohol and straining the remains to make liqueur. This is a new one for me, so no results yet. But I’ll keep you posted.

Happy picking and preserving!