Freezing Peppers
A Simple Guide to Freezing Peppers
Freezing peppers allows you have the experience of fresh peppers even long after typical pepper season has come and gone. Regardless of whether you grow your own peppers or buy them at the store, freezing peppers provides you with fresh peppers anytime of year. Green peppers, red peppers, chili peppers, or jalapeno peppers, you can freeze them all. Here’s how.
Choosing Healthy, Tasty Peppers
As always, whenever it comes to food you want to start with the best ingredients possible. If you are purchasing your peppers at the store, the key is always to look for peppers that have a nice full color to them. The deeper the hue, the spicier the pepper, is the general rule. You also want to avoid blemished peppers or those whose skin has breaks.
In addition, always feel the peppers to make sure they have a nice firm exterior. Any softness or sogginess may be a sign of sickliness.
If you are picking your own peppers, you need to be patient. As a home gardener, you probably already know this, but you never want to rush things. Overly ripe peppers simply lack the spiciness of fully mature peppers. We are always tempted to pick them early, however, because of our fear of pests. Resist the urge.
Waiting too long, of course is just as bad. You don’t want a pepper that has already started to decay either.
Clean and Prepare Your Peppers
Rinse off your peppers in a colander. This is also a general rule for all store bought fruits and vegetables so that you can clean off the pesticides on the exterior. You should do this even if you bought yours from an organic farmer. Although the farmer you bought your peppers from may not use pesticides, the next-door farmer may not be an organic farmer and if they use a crop duster to spread their pesticides there is always a chance that such cancer causing agents may blow onto the organic farm next door. Always better to be safe than sorry.
Cut Your Peppers
You should at least cut your peppers in half at this point. Boiling them whole is unlikely to kill the enzymes that break down your peppers and may jeopardize the whole process of preservation. Cutting them in half works well, as does cutting them into wheels. Some people even like to cut them even smaller but I think this complicates the boiling process unnecessarily.
NOTE: If you are going to serve your peppers in cold dishes where you want them to remain just as crunchy, you can go ahead and jump to the part where you refrigerate them. However, you should be aware that these peppers will not keep for the same amount of time as peppers that have been blanched.
Boil Your Peppers
It seems strange, but before freezing peppers, you have to boil them. Cooks call this blanching because it often causes the boiled substance to lose some of its color. Blanching kills many of the enzymes that aid in the maturing and then decay of the vegetable.
So, just drop your peppers into the boiling water for about 3 minutes.
Cool Off Your Peppers
As soon as you’re done boiling them, drop them in an ice-cold bowl of water for the same amount of time as you boiled them. This stops the boiling process and preserves some of your crispness.
Freezing Peppers
Remove them from the water, place them on a paper towel, and dry them as best you can. You want to make sure that you include as little water as possible when you freeze your peppers.
Place your peppers in Ziploc bags, leaving a tiny hole unzipped. Squeeze out as much air as possible and then finish shutting the bag.
Put them in your freezer.
On the day you defrost them, they should be almost as good as new. So enjoy that spicy Mexican dish in the middle of winter without the extra cost of getting imported peppers. It’s up to you.