Freezing Broccoli

Farm stands and gardens are bountiful at this time of year. Harvests are flowing and farmers sell their produce at bargain prices. This is a great time to take advantage and get some things into the freezer. The veggies are truly fresh and, if you buy locally, you know where they come from.

All vegetables use up their nutrients to stay alive once they are picked. Some use them up faster than others and broccoli is one of the worst offenders. Some believe that within two days of the picking, broccoli has lost most of its nutrients. So if this vegetable is trucked far from where it was picked there is a good chance that it doesn’t have much left for you. A better idea is to buy it fresh from a local farm and get it right into the freezer.

I bought these two beautiful, big heads of broccoli from an organic farm for $7.20.

I washed them and cut them up. Then I put them in a steamer and steamed them for three minutes.

After the three minutes was up, I slid them into some ice water to cool them down, then spun off the extra water.

Next, I put them into pint Ziploc bags and marked them with the year. I repeated this process six times and ended up with six wonderful servings of broccoli that we will be eating this winter.

This broccoli not only has most of its nutrients intact, but each serving only cost me $1.20. The whole process also took me about 25 minutes. It is well worth the effort and economical, too.