How to dehydrate, blanch & freeze for foody goodness

Hinterland Homesteading with Racheal Pascoe

I am absolutely loving this time of year! The weather is terrific with clear blue skies and everything in my home veggie garden is growing like crazy. Eating all that is locally in season is the way to go. It is the most economical way to eat because the food is locally grown, it is in abundance in your area and the transport kilometres to get it to market are low. But how can we enjoy our harvest for longer?

Dehydrating

Recently I harvested our ginger and processed it so it can be used throughout the year. I dug it up, washed it, peeled it, sliced it very thinly and put in the dehydrator. (My dehydrator is the $55 one from Kmart and it is terrific, you don’t have to spend the earth). Once it was dry I put it in the mortar and pestle to make it a fine powder. Or if you have a lot, you could use a food processor or spice mill. 

All sorts of foods can be dehydrated and enjoyed later on. Great ones for school lunchboxes are dried fruits like apple, banana, strawberries, paw paw etc but by far our favourite is an over ripe pineapple. The flavour once it is dry is delicious. Sweet and chewy. That is the one which always runs out first!

Another good food to dehydrate is tomatoes. If you get a little glut of toms you could dehydrate them and store them in olive oil. 

Blanching

Another option is to grow/buy the foods your family eat and blanch them. For example if you have an abundance of cauliflowers growing and you just know it is too many for your family, you could swap with family and friends for something else or blanch the excess. Blanching vegetables is the process of partly cooking vegetables and fruits by submerging them in boiling water and then immediately cooling them to stop further cooking. The technique deactivates enzymes that can affect the flavour, color and texture of produce, allowing it to be stored in peak condition. So blanching cauliflower would mean you might have a zip lock bag or container of cauli pieces in the freezer to pull from when making dinner. Just steam them or add to a stir fry and you are eating fresh vegetables year round. How wonderful.

Freezing

Keep an eye on the prices of fruit and vegetables and when you see what your family like to eat at a low price, buy some extra and process it. Don’t pay $8.98 for a cauliflower, buy a bunch of them at $1.98 each instead. Then you can be enjoying that food for longer at the nice price. Shopping and cooking tips like this over the year can save a household money. You might need the saved money to invest in a chest freezer to store all the wonderful food you are processing!

Freezing foods is a terrific way to save money. If you make a big batch of a meal, eg spaghetti, casserole etc you can store it for another day by freezing it and not letting it go to waste. This is terrific for busy people who are time poor when getting meals ready through the week. Freezing fruits is also a way to save money and enjoy delicious fruits for longer. Don’t buy frozen strawberries from the grocery store, process your own. When they are $1.50 a punnet or even cheaper at the end of our season, stock up, wash and cut them up. Then freeze them to use whenever you like for smoothies etc. The more whole foods you can buy and process yourself, saves you money. The grocery stores make a lot of money by making us believe we need to buy their already processed foods. We can do it all ourselves, it just takes a bit of time.

We are so blessed here in Australia to have fresh food readily available but we have all noticed the cost of living rising, so any tips on saving money each week will make a difference. What could you dehydrate, blanch or freeze this week to make a difference? Happy Homesteading everyone!