Freezing Fruits

I love buying fruits and vegetables on sale. Buying produce on sale can be a huge money saver! If you know how to properly preserve your food, it will go a long way. Not to mention it tastes better, is fresher, doesn't have preservatives or added juices, and looks way better than the canned stuff. I freeze whenever I have the chance. The thing about freezing verses canning however, is that frozen food can go bad with frostbite if not used in time. Be sure that you only freeze enough to use- don't over buy and freeze and then allow it to go to waste. If you freeze regularly, you will want to make sure you are rotating your stock and labeling foods with a date to ensure freshness!

One of my favorite things to freeze is green beans. I usually keep my eye out for sale- I will only buy green bean when they are less than $1.00/pound. In the summer you can usually find fresh garden green beans at a good price, unless you are able to grow them yourself!  Fresh green beans are so much better than canned beans. I can't wait to share with you how to freeze green beans. In order to properly freeze green beans (or any other vegetable) there are a few more steps involved, unlike fruit... I will save that for another blog post!

Floursack towels can be purchased at Walmart,
Target, etc. or my personal favorite- Amazon!

Freezing fruit is pretty simple as you don't have to worry about blanching it (pre-cooking it) like you would vegetables. First and foremost, it's important to wash your produce. I use an organic fruit wash that can be found in your local grocery stores, otherwise I know Norwex has a good fruit wash. Soak, wash, rinse and allow to dry on a clean flour sack towel. **Side note: I love using floursack towels in my kitchen. They are great for drying dishes, cleanup, and just about anything else! They dry quickly, are lightweight, great to covering dough when baking. Also, floursack towels won't leave little bits of lint behind on your dishes, or in this case, fruit.**


Once your fruit has been washed, line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and lay your dried berries in a single layer on the lined sheet. Make sure the berries are not piled on top of each other!


Pop the fruit in the freeze for about 3 hours (or until frozen solid). Once the berries are frozen solid, put them into a labeled bag. That's it!!

**The key here is freezing them prior to bagging AND freezing them in a single layer on the cookie sheet. Often times you will see people bag fruit by simply throwing it in a bag and popping it into the freezer. The end result- a large frozen clump of fruit that will need to be chipped away at or broken apart when you go to use it. By freezing them in a single layer prior to bagging, you avoid one large frozen fruit pile in a bag. The berries will not be frozen together and will make measuring and preparation of the fruit so much easier when you take it out of the freezer! It's a simple trick but is the best way to freeze produce!

I hope you found this little tidbit helpful! I will share how to properly freeze vegetable in a future post. Thanks for stopping by and checking things out! :)

These blueberries have already been frozen in a single layer on a cookie sheet then bagged!
The berries are not frozen together and measuring is a synch!