I've been trying to keep my freezer stocked so that I don't have to shop as often during these covid days. Now that fall is here my local grocery store had 10lb bags of onions, carrots and potatoes on for a very good price. I bought 10lb each of carrots and onions (even though I already had more than 5lb at home) and 20lb of potatoes. I also bought two bundles of celery since they have come back to a reasonable price. That may not seem like a lot until you consider that I mostly cook dinners for just two adults. So how to make sure that my frugal finds don't end up rotten in the compost pile in a month? Well Google says that I can freeze all of it.
I started with making bags of Mirepoix. I use this mixture often with soups and stews and it is a real time saver having a bag already peeled and chopped in the freezer ready to go. I made up ten freezer bags, each with 1 cup chopped carrots, 1 cup chopped celery and 1 chopped onion.
That used up all the celery, but I still had more than 5lb of carrots and probably 15lb of onions to look at. I started with the carrots. I peeled and sliced them, blanched for 2-3 minutes and spread them onto one layer on a large parchment lined cookie sheet to put in the freezer. This worked perfectly with no carrots freezing to the metal. I bagged them up and they are just like store bought frozen carrots.
Then I moved on to the onions. 15lb is a lot of onions to peel and chop! I wore my safety goggles to get through this job. My food processor is on the blink so all this chopping was done by hand. I started by putting the chopped onions (I'm told no blanching is necessary) into oil-sprayed muffin trays, thinking that this would perhaps give me serving-size clumps of onions once I bag them up. I'll have to report back on whether that works out or not - stay tuned! The rest went onto four parchment lined baking trays. I'm hoping that these will break apart easily enough as I bag them so that I can scoop out as much as I need at a time. We'll see which way I prefer.
I also kept some in a vacuum sealed container in the fridge for current use.
Once these onions are frozen and bagged I will start on some potatoes.
To get a head start on the potatoes I made an extra large batch of mashed potatoes with dinner last night. Apparently mashed potatoes freeze and reheat well, so we will see. For the rest of the potatoes they do need to be blanched. I'm thinking I will try some cut as fries and some cubed. Once I'm able to see how this turns out and how much freezer room I have left I may have to go back to get more! (we eat a lot of potatoes and $1.99 for 10lb of potatoes is a very good price)
Mom mentioned that beets are often a good value at this time of year. I wonder if I can freeze them? Hey Google...
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