Freezing Greens

I just returned from another trip to Rose Paradise Farms; this time I spent $11 on this pile of produce. I lined everything up on the counter just to enjoy looking at it: a huge pile of kale, a pile of spinach, green garlic (the long grassy things hanging down), one bunch of beets, a huge bunch of parsley, a really huge pile of chard, plus a some cilantro and dill that were coming up from last year that she gave me for free.

I'm going to make a salad with the parsley, will cook the beets, not sure what to do with green garlic, and I'm going to freeze the greens.

But first, everything had to be washed two or three times outside with the hose, because some of it was really dirty. The spinach, being small, was growing very close to the dirt, the beets were in the dirt, the chard was pretty dirty as well. The kale was small but on stalks several inches above the ground so it wasn't too dirty.


Fill a large container with water, soak and swish the greens, scoop them into another container and pour out the dirty water on your grass or plants. Repeat until there's no dirt settling in the water.

Most of the green have a tough center rib that is hard to chew, so I remove it.

After washing the greens here's what I did: 


Holding a piece of kale in my left hand,
I rip the tough stem off starting at the top,
down to where it sort of breaks off

 



The tough stem will end up
in the compost pile.
 I washed the greens again at this point 

All fruits and vegetables contain enzymes and bacteria that, over time, break down nutrients and change the color, flavor, and texture of food during frozen storage. Greens requires blanching in boiling water or steam to destroy the enzymes before freezing. Blanching times for collards is 3 minutes and all other greens 2 minutes.


Put the greens (chard here) in a large
pot of boiling water, set the timer for
2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to
push the greens down in the water.
They will wilt quickly.






When 2 minutes are up, scoop out the greens
into a big bowl of ice water for 2 more minutes.




The ice water stops the cooking.

 

Drain the greens in the colander,
then put in freezer containers  or
bags, label and date, and put in the freezer.
I froze them in portions just big
enough for 2 servings.  

The greens don't have to be completely drained or cold before going in the freezer. Before cooking them for dinner, let them thaw a bit in the colander to remove some more of the water.   That huge pile of greens doesn't really make many meals, it's amazing how small the pile is when it cooks down.