How to freeze vegetables and fruits. Home Blanks

Freezing is one of the types of blanks. Recently, more and more housewives have joined him, who understand the difference between any canned food and practically fresh plant products. The useful and nutritional quality of frozen fruits and vegetables is much higher than any existing types of canned billets. This should take into account every hostess, choosing the way of storing the products.

You can freeze vegetables and fruits, berries and greens, juices and vegetable purees, homemade semi-finished products and various mixtures. This kind of storage is also used for ready-to-eat dishes. From the school bench, everyone knows that at a temperature below freezing, water freezes. It passes from a liquid state to a solid state, that is, to ice, which has a crystalline structure. Vegetables and fruits mainly consist of water. In this regard, they are easily subjected to freezing. This procedure must be carried out to prevent spoilage.

Freezing vegetables, fruits and other products is required in order to stop the vital activity of bacteria, enzymes and microorganisms that contribute to the decay of our food. For this, it is required to reduce the storage temperature of the blanks to eighteen degrees below zero. It is this value that is maintained in the freezers of refrigerators.

Freeze vegetables, fruits, etc. It is important at a certain speed. Just turning a billet into a piece of ice does not mean sufficient preservation of its nutritional properties. Freezing is a sequential process. It comes from the outer to the inner layers. In this regard, the freezing rate of the harvested product increases with its thickness. If, for example, you decide to put a whole pumpkin in the refrigerator, this process will take several days. Such a slow freezing promotes the formation of ice crystals in the cellular tissues, which tear them apart. When consumed in food, such products lose their appearance and taste. When defrosting, juice flows out of them. They "droop". Consequently, freezing vegetables and fruits is best for a short time. At the same time, the process of water conversion into ice practically at the same time occurs throughout the depth of the tissues. This can be achieved in such ways:

• With a decrease in the thickness of the layers of frozen fruit and vegetable crops, the optimal value of which should not exceed four centimeters;
• When the temperature drops to a value of twenty-four degrees below zero, which can be installed in modern household and industrial refrigerators.

For freezing it is necessary to take fruits and vegetables that do not have mechanical damages, signs of disease, decay and presence within the fruit of pests. Blanching vegetables allows you to slow down the loss of vitamins during long-term storage. Such heat treatment contributes to the preservation of the natural color of the products and significantly shortens the cooking time.

Frozen fruits and vegetables should be properly packed and stored for storage. As containers use special containers, food polyethylene film, cardboard bags, which sold milk, foil, etc.

Fruits and vegetables frozen for future use should be stored in a sealed package. This will prevent the product from drying out and prevent foreign odors from getting into it.