Easy Tips To Properly Freeze All Your Summer Produce Because of my upbringing, I will admit that I used to be quite a snob about canned vegetables. I'll never forget the first time I ate canned corn as a kid and wanting to immediately spit it out! I was wondering what in the heck this imposter was! How could they call themselves the same thing? My neighbor across the street probably had one third of an acre of just rows and rows of corn and he was very generous, giving a ton of it away to all the neighbors. One of my fondest memories as a kid with my grandparents was all of us getting together preparing to make fresh sweet freezer corn. Us kids would spend all day shucking, my grandma was inside blanching the corn and then the other grownups were outside cutting the sweet corn off the cob and bagging it for the freezer. That is how preserved corn should be! Canned corn tastes so bland and different compared to this fresh, sweet corn. After all this hard work we'd go get much-deserved hamburgers to finish our day.

With my parents' huge garden of their own, my mom canned all sorts of tomatoes and beans and made all sorts of jams and other preservatives. She took advantage of all that fresh produce so it could be enjoyed all year long. That being said, I don't have a ginormous garden, but I do love nice summer produce and I would love a way to enjoy a nice peach cobbler in the dead of winter when I can't get perfect, sweet peaches. Here are a few tips to easily freeze and preserve fruits and veggies while they are in their prime this summer.

Keep Everything Separated and as Dry As Possible. You know when you buy the big bag of frozen berries at Costco in the dead of summer and by the time you get home, they have melted quite a bit, leaving quite a bit of juice in the bottom of the bag? If you pop that whole bag right into the freezer, you will be left with a big brick of frozen berries and you'll have to chip away at an ice block, basically, to be able to use a handful at a time. This lesson teaches us that when freezing fruits, they need to be separated while in the freezing process so they will stay separated as you need them. This is best for things like sliced peaches, berries, and cherries. Wash and dry the fruits, then freeze them on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. After they are completely frozen, you can add them to a freezer ziptop bag.

When and Why to Blanch Veggies Before Freezing. Unlike fruits, most veggies to benefit from a quick dip in boiling water, then a rapid cool-down in iced water, aka blanching. This helps get the vegetables really clean, and it also stops the enzymatic action that can degrade the quality and taste of the vegetables. It also reduces the bulk in things like leafy greens, so they take up less room in the freezer. After you blanch greens like kale or chard, shape them into 1/2 pucks, freeze them on a cookie sheet, then transfer the pucks to a ziptop plastic bag. This will give you better portions for things like egg scrambles, soups and stews. Sugar Pack Fruit Did you know that sugar is actually a preservative? Since it is, you can actually make fruit last longer by dipping it in sugar before freezing. This works well for things like sliced peaches or cherries, especially if they will be used for a sweet dessert like pie or cobbler. Toss 3 1/2 cups of fruit with 1/2 cup of sugar and stir until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Pack the sugared fruit into containers, leaving some headspace to account for expansion. And that's all there is to it! Do you have any tips for freezing produce this summer? Please let us know in the comments below.