What To Do With All That Produce (How to Blanch)

We have already been blessed with an abundance of yellow squash and bush beans from our garden this year. We wanted to freeze the majority of our goods before they went to waste and were told that we would first need  to "blanch" our veggies. Of course, my first thought was....

Ok, so that's not the Blanch(e) they were referring to (although I do love those Golden Girls. R.I.P.) I first went to Google for the why and then to my mom, the guru of all things in general, for the how. Mom said she'd come on over to help, so I then called the hubs to pick up some BBQ, threw together a quick squash casserole with some of our bounty and I was ready to host my first ever blanch party. 

First, why bother blanching....

 1. It seals in color, flavor & nutrients making for some bright, yummy, healthy veggies.

2. It stops the enzymes that cause the veggies to ripen and ruin even while frozen, so they will look just as good coming out of the freezer as they did going in.

Now on to the how...

1. The prepwork: Snap the beans (break off end pieces and discard them then break beans into whatever length you want them - about 1 inch for us) and slice the squash. This is the fun part where you get to do your chatting and catching up. 

We had already washed the veggies as soon as they came out of the garden, but we washed them again anyway.

2. Bring veggies to a boil.

 (Some of the websites I looked at said to add salt to water, but we didn't. It is very important not to over boil. Beans were left in maybe a minute or two past the point of boiling but as soon as the squash's water started to boil they were taken out.

 For the squash (because I only had one of these), I used this pot:

3. Drain hot water.

4. Carefully (especially with the squash) transfer veggies into large bowl of ice water.

5. Remove ice by hand and drain water by pouring back into colander.

6. At this point, I did dry the squash a bit (carefully) so it wouldn't stick together in the bag as much.

7. Label and freeze (or eat/cook). Some people blanch just for the benefit of the locked-in color, flavor and nutrition and would at this point eat or cook the produce. For us, it's time to store them in gallon zip-lock freezer bags (be sure to get as much air as possible out of the bag when closing it) and put them in the deep freeze.