Every summer 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 unimaginable pure berry farm merely down the freeway.)
I favor to get all of my selecting achieved forward of the heat of the day makes it unbearable.
I’ve this annoying conduct of being a pasty-white specific particular specific individual, so the mere diploma out of {photograph} voltaic and I flip appropriate correct proper right into a steamed lobster.
Strawberries, pink and black currants, blackberries, gooseberries, and my private 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 capable of profit from native berries all 12 months prolonged.
Blueberries are the house favorite, so we uncover your self selecting spherical 20 quarts or further over the blueberry season. Smoothies, pancakes, muffins, scones and even blueberry syrup all sort 1,000,000 situations larger in the middle of winter when you make them alongside alongside together with your personal or native berries.
These frozen grocery retailer berries don’t have in mind, and the value for up to date berries in January is astronomical.
When you concern all by 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.
Actually, rising your personal blueberries is a superb cheaper completely different, plus you get to find out on the variability. This season, I purchased to sort the Chandler variety of blueberriesand I’m hooked!
To get buckets of blueberries 12 months after 12 months, I’ve put collectively this helpful blueberry rising data. It’s one drawback to poke some bushes all by the flooring and hope for the suitable, and one utterly completely different drawback altogether to know what to do to ensure a beautiful yield. It’s a beautiful be taught; you’ll should try it out.
After getting numerous blueberries, it ceaselessly 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 an outstanding methodology to recollect to can profit from these tasty treats year-round.
Freezing blueberries is straightforward to do and requires no specific gadgets earlier a sheet pan. Many berries with increased 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 cozy when thawed.
Why Are My Berries Mild and Squishy As shortly as I Thaw Them?
When you freeze blueberries, the water inside them freezes into tiny ice crystals. These crystals penetrate the cell partitions of the berries. That’s superb whereas the berries are frozen, nonetheless after they thaw, now the cells of the berry have misplaced their structural integrity, so the berry could be cozy and barely mushy.
As shortly as you utilize frozen blueberries for baking or components like pancakes, it’s most interesting in order so as in order so as to add the blueberries whereas they’re nonetheless frozen. This would possibly assure regardless of you’re making doesn’t end up being utterly purple and will help the berries defend their type whereas they put collectively dinner.
Actually, do you have to happen to want to make a batch of blueberry basil mead, I terribly advocate that you simply simply merely freeze your blueberries and thaw them first. Doing so helps launch the juices, and completely different people mushy berries make for larger mead.
Okay, let’s freeze some blueberries.
Wash Your Berries
It’s important to rinse your berries forward of you freeze them. Washing them as quickly as they’ve thawed is form of unattainable as they are going to be pretty cozy. Berries rising nearer to the underside are often 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 gives them a beautiful swish forward of scooping them out appropriate correct proper right into a colander. Then I’ll give them one utterly completely different good rinse with my sink sprayer.
Dry Your Berries
This subsequent step is also a really extraordinarily environment friendly, due to it’s what is going on on to ensure your berries gained’t stick collectively as quickly as they’re frozen. You’ll wish to confirm your berries are utterly dry forward of freezing them, or they might stick collectively in an enormous frozen mass.
To dry the berries, I put down a wide range 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 numerous 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 ceaselessly one concern that must be achieved, proper?
Freeze Your Blueberries
As quickly on account of the berries are utterly dry, gently unfold them out on a sheet pan. Ensure that the blueberries are in a single layer. You presumably can cram pretty assorted on there. Place the sheet pan all by 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 closing container destined for the freezer. Since they aren’t caught collectively in frozen clumps, likelihood is excessive you’ll retailer them in a plastic tub, a freezer bag, or my hottest methodology, a vacuum seal bag.
A phrase about vacuum sealing
In case your vacuum sealer has a lightweight setting, it is doable it is potential you may wish to make use of that. In a single different case, the berries could be sealed pretty tightly all by the bag. This isn’t primarily a problem 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 personal; it’s low price, an unimaginable sealer, and I need it pretty a bit I’ve bought assorted for relations as objects.
And that’s that – easy frozen blueberries.
Now when you get a hankering for blueberries, you’ll merely have the flexibleness to grab a handful for snacking, two cups for muffins, an entire bag for a pie, regardless of you need with out having to aim to interrupt off a little bit of little little bit of icy blueberry mash.
I wish to make use of those frozen blueberries as delicious edible ice cubes and will often seize a handful to plop in my switchel or lemonade.
Come January, you’ll really respect the effort you place into selecting, cleaning and freezing. Hmm, now I would really like blueberry pancakes.
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