August is Time to Freeze

The following guest post is written by my husband, Tim.  

Yesterday it was 92 degrees outside, today 93. Despite the heat, my mind has been focused on freezing. Freezing fruit, that is.  Soon the weather will turn colder, the days shorter, and the sweet taste of fresh fruit will be but a memory, unless . . .

MJ and I love fruit smoothies. We fell in love with them 11 years ago while out in California. We determined that the secret to a homemade fruit smoothie is frozen fruit (Who knew?). We’ve tried freezing fruit before, by simply throwing mixed berries in one of those Glad freezer bags and hoping for the best. Occasionally, we’d break off a chunk of berry ice and toss it into a blender to make a smoothie or two. Most of the time, however, the fruit ended up covered with ice crystals, hardly recognizable. It would sit in the freezer for a year or two before being thrown out.

This year, I was intent on doing it better, buying the fruit at the peak of ripeness (which coincides with the lowest prices). We’d save some money and a little bit of summer at the same time.

As a self-proclaimed master of google research, I googled “freezing fruit” and scanned a few of the 2.26 million websites that came up. I learned about the science behind fruit freezing and lessons learned by the countless fruit freezers that have gone before me. What I learned was that I had been doing it wrong. See the key, I’m told, is to freeze the fruit on cookie sheets lined with wax paper. I’m getting ahead of myself.  Here are the steps I took:

1.  Wash the fruit and prepare it for freezing (peel, remove stems, remove pits, etc.)

2.  Once completely dry, place the fruit on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper (the fruit should not be touching).

3.  Place the cookie sheet into the fridge to cool (for about an hour) and then into the freezer for freezing (a couple hours).

4.  Place the frozen fruit into freezer safe containers.  I used Ziplock freezer bags, though I think their days are limited in our home (see MJ’s last post).

Freezing fruit this way minimizes the freezing time and likelihood of freezer burn. It also allows for you to grab a handful of blueberries, or two or three strawberries at a time. Brilliant!

Pictured  above is our freezer, halfway through the Great Berry Freeze of August ‘09. To date, there are six pints of strawberries, five pints of blueberries, and 4 pints of raspberries frozen in our freezer. I check on them from time to time and have not noticed any ice crystals. Those websites tell me my fruit will last up to a year in there. So hopefully, as the first snow hits our Jersey lawn, I’ll be on the couch with a little Jimmy Buffet on the iPod and a little bit of summer in a glass.

Tags: food and nutrition, fruit