If you want to enjoy homemade stew in winter, freeze vegetables in summer and autumn, which you can then use to easily and quickly cook this delicious dish. It can be prepared for your family or guests at any time.
The easiest way is to prepare bags with a mix of vegetables, which are placed in a pot. You will need tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, green beans, carrots and green herbs, such as parsley.
Clean the vegetables, cut them into pieces and blanch them for 3 minutes in boiling water. The blanching is done to preserve the beneficial vitamins in the vegetables and facilitate their culinary processing at a later stage.
Once you remove the vegetables from the boiling water, let them drain and cool and put them in a baking dish. This is done so as not to crush the vegetables when they freeze in plastic bags.
Put the trays in the freezer and after a few hours, when the vegetables harden, make mixed packets for stews. They should contain all the vegetables and a little chopped parsley.
Once you put the vegetables in the bag, tuck the edges well so that all the air is kept out. Label it so you know how long you can keep it.
Frozen vegetables for stew can be stored for about 12 months. After this period, they can still be used, but will have lost much of their beneficial properties.
Once the time comes to prepare the stew, just put it in the pan with the frozen vegetables without defrosting them beforehand because it will become a mess.
If you want, you can freeze the bags with only one kind of vegetables and mix in the process of making casseroles. You can also freeze some chopped parsley separately and, if necessary, break off a piece from the frozen mixture.
But this method is impractical, as you might end up needing less vegetables, and once you remove them from the freezer, they should not be refrozen.
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