Freezing and pickling vegetables

When our garden is in full production, we have too much food to eat all of it fresh. Often we give some to family and friends but when there is too much beetroot or enough silverbeet or beans to sink a ship, the excess is picked and processed in the kitchen. Recently we had a patch of beetroot that needed to be harvested so it was all pulled out and I made pickled beetroot. This is such a common thing in Australia and there are always tins of it in every supermarket so many people have forgotten that home made pickled beetroot far outweighs the poor tinned cousin for taste and value.

I tried the Women's Weekly Preserves cookbook recipe for these beetroot and they're really delicious. It's one of the easiest pickled vegetables you can make. Wash the beets thoroughly, then cut the leaves off without cutting into the beetroot, boil until tender (about 45 minutes), drain and allow to cool. Reserve ½ cup of the cooking water to mix with the vinegar (recipe below). When they're cool enough to handle, it's very easy to just skip the skins off with your fingers. Cut them up however you prefer, then place in sterilised jars and fill the jars with hot spiced vinegar. The three large jars I made will be stored in the fridge and eaten over summer but could also be stored in the cupboard for six months as long as you're confident with your sterilising and sealing. The high vinegar and sugar content act as a preservative, preventing the growth of bacteria in the sterile jar.

RECIPE FOR 1 KG (2.2 LB)
1 litre/quart cider vinegar (I used malt vinegar)
220g (7.7 oz) sugar
½ cup of cooking water
1 small cinnamon stick (I didn't use that)
8 black peppercorns
4 small dried chillies
1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to the boil, and pour it hot over the beetroot in the jars.

It's a very easy job to just slip the skins off with your fingers.  Don't worry, the red stain washes off.

Here are the beets I did last week, some sliced, some quartered, packed in sterile jars and ready for the hot spicy vinegar.

Four bags of blanched fresh beans, out of the garden and in the freezer within the hour. These will be very handy when the beans have finished for the season.

Other vegetables, like beans, silverbeet, spinach, peas and carrots, only need blanching to be stored in the freezer for eating later when the garden isn't producing as much. Always blanch; it slows the action of enzymes on the vegetables which can cause loss of flavour, colour and vitamins.

How to blanch vegetables.

There is no doubt about it, when you have a backyard patch, you need to learn about preserving food too, otherwise you'll end up wasting some of it. But if you do that, if you learn these few basic skills, you'll have a good supply of fresh and frozen food to keep you going. I know my north American friends would generally can beans, carrots and many other vegetables. Here we do it differently, here we have a longer growing period and we generally use fresh most of the year, supplemented by the frozen stores.

Don't forget that you can also use these skills on cheaply bought vegetables that you might find at the market or supermarket. If you have too much of any vegetable, think about the best way to store it for later. If you pickle or freeze it before it loses its freshness and you'll get the full value of your money. I think that once you get a taste for home pickling and you see how easy blanching and freezing are, there will be no going back.