Written by Michele of Veggie Num Nums

I love summer! I love the hot weather, the long days, cooking and eating in the backyard; and I especially love all the wonderful fresh fruit stacked seemingly mile-high at the grocery stores and farmer’s markets. I tend to get so overexcited by the abundance of gorgeous berries, nectarines, apricots, and other fruity finds, that I inevitably buy more than my husband and I can eat before the fruit gets over ripe and mushy. My solution? Freezing! There are many fruits that can be frozen with just a minimum amount of prep work, and they are ready to be enjoyed later when farmer’s markets are a distant memory, and all the grocery stores carry are flavorless and overpriced strawberries picked weeks too early in faraway places.

Freezing fruit is not quite as simple as chucking a bag of whole peaches in the freezer. The very cold and dry conditions in a freezer will cause negative changes in the color, texture and taste of fruit. So, the key is to do a bit of prep work to ensure that the unpleasant changes are minimal, and that your delicious fresh fruit is still delicious after defrosting.

To freeze fruit you need the right kinds of containers. I find that the extra thick freezer bags work well, as do plastic freezer containers which are especially good for juicy fruit. You also need an organized freezer so that you have room for all your bags and containers; you need to able to easily keep track of what you have on hand. Frozen fruit should be used up within 8 to 12 months—which is perfect because by then it’s summer all over again.Just remember to label all of your containers with the contents and the freezing date; otherwise, your freezer can become a very scary and confusing place full of mystery tubs and baggies. At least for me, just about everything looks the same once it’s frozen.

Fruit that will be frozen should be fully ripe, but still quite firm and blemish-free. The fruit needs to be washed thoroughly and then peeled, trimmed, and sliced—just as you would do before serving it. Everything needs to be extra clean. Certain fruits, such as peaches, will darken when frozen. Using ascorbic acid (vitamin C) will minimize the darkening and will also help preserve flavor and nutrients. You can buy the powdered version of ascorbic acid at some drugstores, or at grocery stores and hardware stores near the canning supplies section.

There are several ways to “pack” fruit for freezing: syrup pack, sugar pack, dry pack, or unsweetened pack. From everything I’ve read it seems that packing fruit with sugar or sugar syrup is the best way to ensure tasty fruit once it has been defrosted. Fruit packed in syrup works really well for desserts, and the sugar and dry packed fruits are good to cook with. The basic syrup recipe is 2 ¾ cups of sugar dissolved in 4 cups of water. You can also make lighter or heavier syrups, depending on the sweetness of your fruit. The University of Georgia article covers syrup recipes in detail. Packing fruit in sugar just means that you sprinkle regular sugar over your fruit, mix it well, and then put it in a container to freeze.

I find that dry packing fruit works best for berries. I spread cleaned and trimmed strawberries onto a cookie sheet which I pop into the freezer. When the berries are frozen, I pack them in plastic freezer tubs. Once defrosted the berries still maintain their shape, though they are rather soft just like most frozen and defrosted fruits. They still taste really good, and I love to use them in smoothies and in yogurt.

Those very scientific foodies at Cook’s Illustrated Magazine experimented with the whole fruit freezing process and developed “Master Steps for Freezing Fruit” which they believe is the best way to ensure the highest quality frozen fruit possible. Their article is very informative and full of good tips, so I urge you to look it over before you start freezing your own summer fruit. They also extol the virtues of using some type of a sugar preparation to guarantee that you end up with the tastiest fruit possible.

Sometimes I’ll find myself with an overabundance of a certain fruit that is already past its prime; and as long as it is not actually rotten, I can still rescue the fruit from a slow demise in the compost bin. This just happened to me when our peach tree generously gave us several dozen peaches that were exactly ripe all on the same day. I cooked and then pureed the peaches before freezing. With cooking and pureeing, I can use the puree later for things like ice cream, mousses, and pastries. I clean, peel and dice the fruit and then cook it with sugar to taste, lemon juice, and a little water until the fruit is very tender. Once it’s cool I puree it in the blender, and then freeze it in a bunch of small portions. I just used some of my defrosted peach puree to make a delicious ice cream.

If you find yourself awash in strawberries and want to freeze them the mad scientist way, you can try Alton Brown’s method of freezing using dry ice. Frankly, dry ice scares me since I’ve been told a million times that you can get burned by it. But, if you are the adventurous type, Alton freezes his berries by breaking dry ice into pieces and tossing the ice with the berries. I guess the advantage of this method is that the fruit freezes extremely fast which is important to maintain the flavor and texture of the berries.

In my own scientific frame of mind, I tried freezing a variety of fruits to see how well they would taste once defrosted. I froze mangoes, papayas, and strawberries. For the berries, I used the cookie sheet method with no sugar or syrup. The mangoes and papayas were slightly coated with sugar. The strawberries defrosted well though they were pretty soft and had exuded quite a bit of juice, and they seemed to have lost a small amount of their natural sweetness. The papaya was really good defrosted—soft, but not mushy and still very flavorful. My favorite was the mango; it still had good texture and color, and tasted surprisingly fresh. The next time I freeze berries I think I’ll still freeze them on a cookie sheet, but add just a bit of sugar to help maintain some of the original sweet taste.

I’ve just covered the basic of fruit freezing in this article, so I’m going to direct you to some of the best online resources that cover fruit freezing/preservation techniques in great detail.

Also, if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail me.

Cheers!
Michele at www.veggienumnums.com

Links:
The University of Georgia has a very easy to follow overview on fruit freezing: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/uga_freeze_fruit.pdf
New Mexico State University is another great resource: http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/e-321.pdf
Here is the Cook’s Illustrated article: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/images/document/howto/MJ99_ISfreezefruit...
University of Minnesota has a more science based article on freezing fruits and vegetables: http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ0555.html
The University of New Hampshire has a lovely chart listing freezing techniques by type of fruit: http://www.umaine.edu/umcepenobscot/Freezing%20Fruit.pdf
The National Center for Home Food Preservation has an absolute wealth of information on fruit freezing and food preservation in general: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html
And, if you are interested in Alton Brown’s method of freezing strawberries with dry ice, you can find the full recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/frozen-strawberries-recip...