Hi all.
I’m trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of celery and bag of potatoes before they go bad on me. I was thinking of pre-preparing them for meals, specifically shredding the potatoes to later make hashbrowns from them (shredding would probably be my best option seeing this bag of potatoes is filled with spuds of weird shapes), and chopping the celery to throw into who knows what.
I’ve looked up how to prepare these things, and everywhere says that these two need to be blanched before freezing due to their water content. Now, there’d be no issue there, however, every site I come across states that they need to be laid out on a pan, put in the freezer while on the pan, and then bagged afterwards.
My main issue here is that while I have space in the freezer for the final product, because of the freezer being shared by myself and my roommates, there’s not enough space to fit a baking pan in the freezer. I was wondering if I could simply put the otherwise finished product in a bag for freezing while skipping the flash-freeze on a baking sheet step, or if consequences would come from skipping it.
I freeze veggies all the time (mostly onions, peppers, carrots, potatoes) and Jo, they don’t need to be blanched first.
But they will behave differently than fresh - onions and peppers are soft once thawed, and require higher heat to wilt as the moisture comes out faster.
I would cut them up, lay them on a tray and freeze, then bag. If you freeze in the bag they clump together and are a pain to work with.
Potatoes I make into something (roasted for example), and don’t cook fully so when I reheat they have some moisture left.