Summer is full of fruitful surprises, which we want to have in the winter as well. To achieve this, it is enough to freeze them. But freezing fruit has its subtleties.
Frozen fruit and vegetables retain many more vitamins and nutrients than canned ones. The first rule to follow when freezing them is that from the moment of collection of the fruit and vegetables should be as short as possible until they end up in the freezer.
Vitamin C, which is contained in broccoli, if left six days at room temperature drops by sixty percent. But if you store them at -20, the loss will be ten percent per year.
Fruit and vegetables are frozen only once, because they lose their valuable substances when defrosted and are frozen again.
In the store such fruit and vegetables are easily recognizable. Just shake the bag and if you feel that there are frozen lumps, do not buy them.
But if you decide to stock up your freezer yourself, wash and dry fruit and vegetables well before freezing them. If the fruit have seeds, remove them.
Peppers should be cleaned of seeds and cauliflower - torn into pieces. Parsley and dill can also be frozen. Chop them and divide them into small portions in packets.
If freezing cherries, as well as other fruit of this size, arrange them in a tray next to each other and freeze them lightly. Then place them in a bag. This way it is guaranteed, that each fruit will be separate and there will be no chunky shapeless mass.
When defrosting fruit or vegetables, do not wash them, because water washes away vitamins and spoils the taste of fruit and vegetables. If you want to defrost them, just put the bag in the fridge for five hours.
Another way to defrost is to put the bag of fruit or vegetables in another bag, tie it and put it in a container with running warm water - no more than forty-five degrees.
If you are going to boil vegetables, do not defrost them, because when you defrost them slowly, vitamin C is lost very quickly.
Boil them before serving - this will take twice as long as boiling fresh vegetables. If you are going to use the fruit as a filling, do not defrost them.
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