Friday, October 26, 2012

Freezing Peppers

Peppers are still coming
In an early post, I mentioned we were freezing all the sweet peppers and the poblanos. Well fortunately  our pepper plants are still producing. Pooka asked if we could show you how we are freezing the peppers.

Late harvest
Once we harvested the peppers, I washed them and then left them in the colander or on a plate  for about an hour or so to make sure they dry completely. You don not want to add extra water to the peppers.








Cored and seeded

After the peppers are dry, you core and seed them. Since these were poblanos, I wanted to get most of the seeds out to lesson the heat. WORD OF WARNING: Don't be silly like me and forget to wash your hands before touching your eyes, nose or mouth. You will regret it. I did. My eye was mad for a couple of hours.



Dicing
 In this case we happened to have my Mom's handy dandy onion dicer in the house. This is a great way to make sure you are getting a uniform cut size (FYI to anyone out there: Christmas idea for Mommy). It is even better since it allows a Pooka to do the cutting. Place the pepper on skin side up. This allows it to get a better cut. If you do skin side down, it tends to have a harder time getting started.

Pooka's picture Diced Peppers 
 Once they are cut, they fall into the nice little catch area. I cut all ours at once before emptying out the basin. This way when I had more peppers in the house, I was able to keep track and I only cut them as I was ready to freeze them.






Ready for the big freeze
 Pooka then helped me spread them out on a silicone pie pan. We found this worked out better then a metal pan because A) the silicone we could bend to fit in the freezer easier and B) the frozen peppers could be popped off since we could again wiggle and flex the pan

Frozen peppers ready for use when you are






Put the pan in your freezer for a couple of hours. Once they are good and frozen, pull out the pan and "pop" them off. We just used our hands, and we never needed to dirty a utensil.  The frozen peppers were put in a ziplock bag that was labeled  dated and thrown right back into the freezer.



However, PLEASE remember if working with hot peppers to wash your hands (I didn't think again and checked Pooka for a tooth coming in. Yeah.. That didn't go well.) Please learn from my mistakes.

The frozen peppers have been used in meals already. They work great in anything that is cooking them. I haven't tried thawing and using them raw. I don't know if this would work well since when the water froze into crystals of ice, it may of damaged the cell walls of the pepper (thus possibly leaving them kinda mushy). However, for cooking with and adding to many a meal, its a quick and easy way to add peppers. Plus hopefully come middle of winter, we can still be eating from Pooka's garden.

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