What I Freeze Every Summer Instead of Canning

After so many months of planning, prepping, planting, watering, weeding, and fighting pests, the heavy months of harvesting are now upon us. But if you’re like me and don’t have air conditioning and therefore don’t like heating up your house with canners, there’s some good news: a lot of what’s coming in from the garden right now can be preserved by freezing, or- in the very least- frozen until later when you have the time to deal with it.

Here’s a list of my favorite things to throw in the freezer for later.

Berries are top of mind at the moment because we just so happen to be in the thick of berry harvest time. My dear friend Andrea and I stole away for a few hours of blueberry picking this morning. I came home with four more gallons of blueberries that need to be sorted, cleaned, and stashed away. The great thing about berries is you can spread them out on a sheet pan, flash freeze them (to prevent clumping together), and then put them into bags or containers to be processed into jams, jellies, pie filling, or whatever else I’d like when the winter months are upon us. I do almost all of my jam and jelly making during the depths of winter. No need to turn your kitchen into a sauna during the heat of summer- do your jam making when you actually want the extra heat in the house.

Tomatoes are so incredibly simple: throw them into a large freezer bag until you either have enough to make a batch of whatever you’re wanting to preserve, or until you have the time to deal with them. Once thawed, the skins slip right off, thus eliminating the need to blanch and peel like you do when they’re fresh.

You can chop your peppers first (which I usually do with bell peppers) or freeze them whole (as I do for smaller hot peppers like habanero, serrano, chilis, etc.). I put them in plastic freezer containers and they keep incredibly well in the freezer.

I once had all of my white onions bolt in the garden, which makes them unable to be stored. So I bought a pair of goggles specifically for chopping onions (I cry like no other) and set about chopping them in my food processor and scooping them into 8 oz. freezer containers. Every time I needed an onion, I would simply grab one of these containers out of the freezer and dump them into whatever I was cooking. They thaw and cook up in no time! Freezing your onions is a great storage alternative for those who don’t have a cool place to hang their onions for the winter or for those who live down south who can’t grow good storage varieties.

I talked about this one earlier in the season, but rhubarb is so simple to freeze. Just chop and put it into freezer bags to use during the winter. I love anything that doesn’t require blanching!

Most people like to dry their herbs, but with regular drying you lose a lot of color and freshness. Take basil, for example. It has almost no flavor once dried (with the exception of freeze dried, which I love). So if you really want to preserve the flavor of your herbs, consider chopping them up and freezing them in ice cube trays with a little bit of olive oil. Or chop them and mix them with butter to create your own custom compound butters.

You can chop up many different herbs along with chives, green onions, and greens like kale, swiss chard, or spinach and put them all together in a freezer bag. Grab a couple Tablespoons worth to add into soups, stews, and roasts. Avoid strong herbs such as dill, mint, and cilantro as those flavors can overpower the rest.

It is so simple to shred and freeze zucchini and summer squash and pack into freezer bags. This way they can be used all winter long for breads, muffins, cakes, and soups. Be sure to squeeze out excess moisture before freezing.

Garlic scape pesto is something I eagerly look forward to every year. I make up large quantities and freeze in jelly jars. The same goes for basil pesto (or any other kind of pesto you can dream up); whip up a batch in your food processor, transfer to jelly jars, and freeze. My pesto holds up for years in the freezer.

While I do can a lot of corn, my most favorite way to preserve corn is by cutting it from the cob and putting it into a roasting pan with butter and heavy cream. I then bake it, cool it, and measure it out into freezer bags. It’s absolutely divine!

Cherries, plums, choke cherries, peaches- these can all be frozen whole. I love to pick and freeze choke cherries and then juice them later in my steam juicer to make jelly or syrup.

I always keep a 2-gallon bag in my freezer that I add different scraps to from whatever I’m cooking: onion skins, chicken backs, wing tips, or carcasses, the ends of carrots and celery, etc. Once that bag is full, I use it to make chicken stock. But another thing I do around harvest time is create soup starter or stock bags with my extra produce. When I have an excess of carrots, celery, onions, garlic scapes, etc., I will divide them into freezer bags to have a base for whatever soup I’m wanting to make in the future. So incredibly handy, especially when you’re in a hurry!

While both of these can be canned (I’m defnitely in the canned green beans camp, but I know many prefer them frozen), these should both technically be blanched first, flash frozen, and then doled out into freezer storage.

I have a walk-in cooler where I can hold over or store large quantities of produce such as carrots and apples. That means I can keep big boxes and barrels of apples until I’m ready to process them. But if you don’t have a good place to stash those, apples also freeze beautifully (just add a bit of lemon juice to prevent browning) and in doing so, makes future applesauce making a breeze.

The same goes for carrots; I can store them in a tote in my walk-in all year long. But they are another crop that freeze incredibly well. If you’re going to use up your carrots within a couple of months, you don’t need to blanch them. But if you want them to hold longer, dice or slice them up and blanch for 2 minutes prior to flash freezing them.

I never like to put any sort of hot or warm food into plastic, so when freezing things like stock/broth, soups, etc., try to use wide mouth glass jars. Never pour hot food into cold jars; cool the food first and then pour into your jar, only filling it about 3/4 of the way. Then transfer to the refrigerator first and cool completely before finally moving the jar to your freezer. This will prevent your jars from cracking in the freezer.

Be sure to save your coconut oil jars, pasta jars, jam jars, etc. from the store- they are great for using for food storage.

As I’ve already mentioned, I like using freezer deli containers in varying sizes for freezing berries, onions, peppers, etc. I keep a stash of 8 oz, 16 oz, and 32 oz on hand for these purposes. I also keep a supply of these 8 oz. ice cream containers for when I make my homemade ice cream and gelato. This is the perfect single-use size for my family- and another favorite way to process and freeze my berries in the summer.

As far as freezer bags, I like to keep quart, gallon, and 2-gallon bags on hand this time of year. The largest bags I use for bones and carcasses for making stock. It’s also what I use for freezing rhubarb, whole tomatoes, and soup/stock bags as those are typically frozen in large quantity.

I hope this takes a bit of pressure off of you as the produce starts coming in from the garden. Let’s not lose our sanity this late in the summer! Freeze it now, deal with it in a few months when things have slowed down and you’re looking for ways to brighten up those dark days of winter.

Happy preserving, my friend! I’ll see you next week,

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