How to Freeze Your Fruits and Veggies Without Losing Flavor

I love harvest time every year! While full harvest mode starts in the fall, you may already have a trickle of fresh garden goodies to enjoy.

By August and beyond, the long hours in the garden are finally paying off, and while we enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables, we can’t possibly eat all of them now. So I needed to learn how to freeze fresh produce to help me save the garden harvest for later use.

How To Freeze Fresh Produce

Just put it in the freezer, right? It’s not complicated. 

But, there’s more than one way to freeze your produce. You can freeze your fruits and vegetables just as they are from the garden. But if you do it this way, it’ll take more space. If you don’t have a lot of space, you might want to chop them up a bit, or even puree.

Freezing chopped up veggies and storing them in the right portions can make it easy to cook later on.

What Can You Freeze Whole?

Berries are easy to freeze whole, and all you need to do is wash them and freeze them on a sheet before adding them to a Ziploc bag. You’ll be able to use them on your cereal or yogurt, add them to smoothies, or make a pie with them.

Grapes freeze very well and are great to eat as frozen candy on a hot day. They are not the greatest once thawed, so just use them frozen or in your smoothies.

Small cherry and grape tomatoes freeze well whole, too. Use them later to make a chunky sauce for pasta, make a cream of tomato soup, or roasted tomatoes with garlic. YUM!

What to Freeze Chopped Up

Fruits like peaches, bananas, and pineapple freeze better if you chop them up first (after you peel them, of course).

Lots of veggies can also be chopped and frozen. Green beans, peas, red and green peppers, broccoli, and cauliflower freeze very well. Think of it this way: if it’s in the freezer section at the supermarket, you can safely freeze it too.

Most veggies (all of the above) should be blanched before freezing to preserve their vibrant colors and stop the enzymes that could spoil them faster.

But there are some vegetables that you can freeze without blanching: tomatoes, winter squash, and tomatoes are in this category.

What to Freeze Pureed

If you’re freezing it for soup, sauce, or pie, it can be frozen after you puree it. It’ll make it very compact to freeze, and it’ll take up the smallest space in your freezer. Of course, you’ll need to use up your entire container.

It’s a good idea to freeze pureed fruits and vegetables in smaller portions or bags for the most efficient use of your harvest. If you’re using bags, you can use a bag stand from Amazon to help hold it up as you make your batches.

Apples and pears freeze well only after you puree and cook them first.

Strawberries, tomatoes, butternut squash, yams, broccoli, and cauliflower are good candidates for freezing in pureed form.

If you’re growing tomatoes, the month of August will give you plenty to eat and freeze some too!

Freeze Ready-Made meals

Take some time to make your favorite meals and freeze them for later use. I do this a LOT!!! Making twice to three times the amount of a dish won’t take double the time, but will save you during the holidays or any other busy times that are sure to come unexpectedly.

You can freeze soups and stews this way: eat some now, and freeze the rest for a rainy day.

How to Freeze Herbs

Herbs bring our meals to life, and I couldn’t imagine not freezing my herbs. The best way to freeze herbs is to chop them up and put them into ice-cube trays covered with either oil, water, or broth. Once frozen, you can pop them out of the trays and store them in a freezer bag or container.

As you cook throughout the year, just pop a cube into your dishes and enjoy summer flavors all over again.

I hope I’ve inspired you to get busy freezing some of your harvest this summer and beyond. And now that you know how to freeze fresh produce, it should be easy to do.