How to freeze broccoli
13.3 years ago broccoli, freezing
I love broccoli, the problem is no one else in my family likes it with me. I am also cheap and don’t like paying $2.49 per pound at the produce section of my grocery store nor $3.69 per pound in the frozen section. I had a simple solution to this problem buy 3 pounds 3 lbs. ($1 a pound) of broccoli from Costco. Though like I mentioned I love broccoli I do not love it enough to put away before it goes bad in about a week.
The solution to this problem was quite simple, I would simply freeze 2 lbs. of broccoli to eat later.
Step 1: Cut and wash the broccoli. Make sure the broccoli is in roughly uniform size pieces. I simple cut these to the size I would want to eat the so I can save myself some time when it comes time to cook these later. Given a quick rinse, I wouldn’t worry too much about getting them dry since you will be putting them in water in a few moments anyway.
Step 2: Blanch the broccoli. You need to blanch the broccoli to kill and of the bad bacteria, etc. before you freeze them. You have 2 options here, you can steam them for 5 minutes or boil them for 3 minutes. I opted for steaming so I could easily add and remove my broccoli using a metal colander.
Just fill up your “basket” drop it into already boiling water…
and throw a lid on and wait 5 minutes.
Step 3: Stop cooking the broccoli. You do not want to keep cooking the broccoli so take your now blanched broccoli and….
dump it into a waiting ice cold water bath.
After cooling for 2-3 minutes move into portion size Ziloc bag to enjoy later.
Though this water appears much greener than the picture shows there is are plenty of vitamins and minerals leached into this water and would be a great start for some vegetable stock…but I was tired and dumped it down the sink…
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