Every summer season season season from early June via August, a minimal of as quickly as per week, you’ll uncover me up early, berry basket in hand, heading to our native pick-your-own berry farm. (We’re lucky ample to have an essential pure berry farm merely down the freeway.)
I favor to get all of my selecting achieved earlier than the heat of the day makes it unbearable.
I’ve this annoying conduct of being a pasty-white explicit express particular person, so the mere diploma out of image voltaic and I flip appropriate correct proper right into a steamed lobster.
Strawberries, pink and black currants, blackberries, gooseberries, and my non-public favorite – blueberries all end up coming residence with me. Some get made into jam immediately, others go appropriate correct proper right into a batch of mead, and nonetheless others I freeze so we’re in a position to get pleasure from native berries all 12 months prolonged.
Blueberries are the house favorite, so we uncover your self selecting spherical 20 quarts or extra over the blueberry season. Smoothies, pancakes, muffins, scones and even blueberry syrup all type 1,000,000 circumstances larger in the midst of winter when you make them alongside alongside together with your private or native berries.
These frozen grocery retailer berries don’t ponder, and the value for up to date berries in January is astronomical.
In case you concern all by way of the carbon worth of getting these tiny cartons of berries to your grocery retailer and the ecological costs of consuming out of season, these flavorless berries aren’t worth it.
So, we put the work in now.
In actuality, rising your private blueberries is an impressive cheaper numerous, plus you get to find out on the variability. This season, I purchased to type the Chandler variety of blueberriesand I’m hooked!
To get buckets of blueberries 12 months after 12 months, I’ve put collectively this useful blueberry rising data. It’s one concern to poke some bushes all by way of the flooring and hope for the proper, and one utterly totally different concern altogether to know what to do to ensure an outstanding yield. It’s an outstanding be taught; you’ll ought to attempt it out.
After getting various blueberries, it regularly helps to have some blueberry recipe inspiration when deciding what to do with all of them.
Wherever you end up getting your blueberries, freezing them is a superb methodology to ensure you can get pleasure from these tasty treats year-round.
Freezing blueberries is simple to do and requires no explicit units earlier a sheet pan. Many berries with greater water content material materials supplies provides or thinner skins don’t freeze all that precisely and end up a mushy mess even when frozen. Blueberries, then as quickly as further, freeze fantastically. Granted, they might nonetheless be comfy when thawed.
Why Are My Berries Mild and Squishy As shortly as I Thaw Them?
In case you freeze blueberries, the water inside them freezes into tiny ice crystals. These crystals penetrate the cell partitions of the berries. That’s fantastic whereas the berries are frozen, nonetheless after they thaw, now the cells of the berry have misplaced their structural integrity, so the berry might very effectively be comfy and barely mushy.
As shortly as you make the most of frozen blueberries for baking or elements like pancakes, it’s best in order so as in order so as to add the blueberries whereas they’re nonetheless frozen. This would possibly assure irrespective of you’re making doesn’t end up being utterly purple and might help the berries defend their kind whereas they put collectively dinner.
In actuality, must you happen to wish to make a batch of blueberry basil mead, I terribly advocate that you just simply merely freeze your blueberries and thaw them first. Doing so helps launch the juices, and totally different people mushy berries make for larger mead.
Okay, let’s freeze some blueberries.
Wash Your Berries
It’s important to rinse your berries earlier than you freeze them. Washing them as quickly as they’ve thawed is form of unattainable as they’ll be pretty comfy. Berries rising nearer to the underside are normally dirty from rain splashing mud and dirt on them.
Rinse your berries precisely in chilly water. I favor to fill my sink with chilly water and offers them an outstanding swish earlier than scooping them out appropriate correct proper right into a colander. Then I’ll give them one utterly totally different good rinse with my sink sprayer.
Dry Your Berries
This subsequent step is also a extraordinarily extraordinarily environment friendly, on account of it’s what is going on on to ensure your berries gained’t stick collectively as quickly as they’re frozen. You’ll need to confirm your berries are utterly dry earlier than freezing them, or they might stick collectively in an unlimited frozen mass.
To dry the berries, I put down fairly a number of kitchen towels on my counter or desk and gently unfold the berries out appropriate correct proper right into a single layer. I attempt to confirm they’ve various room and good airflow, so all of them dry precisely.
Now, go do one concern else for an hour or so whereas they dry. It’s summertime; there’s regularly one concern that should be achieved, acceptable?
Freeze Your Blueberries
As quickly on account of the berries are utterly dry, gently unfold them out on a sheet pan. Ensure the blueberries are in a single layer. You presumably can cram pretty different on there. Place the sheet pan all by way of the freezer for two hours or until the berries are frozen sturdy.
Bundle deal Your Blueberries
Working shortly, in order that they don’t begin to thaw or perspire, swap the berries to their final container destined for the freezer. Since they aren’t caught collectively in frozen clumps, chances are chances are you’ll retailer them in a plastic tub, a freezer bag, or my hottest approach, a vacuum seal bag.
A phrase about vacuum sealing
In case your vacuum sealer has a lightweight setting, it is doable chances are high you will need to make use of that. In a single different case, the berries might very effectively be sealed pretty tightly all by way of the bag. This isn’t primarily a difficulty whereas frozen, however it makes for added mushy berries as they thaw. Give your berries room to breathe.
Appropriate correct proper right here’s a hyperlink to the vacuum sealer I private; it’s low-cost, an essential sealer, and I select it pretty a bit I’ve bought different for family members as objects.
And that’s that – easy frozen blueberries.
Now when you get a hankering for blueberries, you’ll merely have the pliability to grab a handful for snacking, two cups for muffins, an entire bag for a pie, irrespective of you need with out having to try to interrupt off barely little little bit of icy blueberry mash.
I need to make use of those frozen blueberries as delicious edible ice cubes and might normally seize a handful to plop in my switchel or lemonade.
Come January, you’ll really respect the trouble you place into selecting, cleaning and freezing. Hmm, now I would love blueberry pancakes.
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