Barb, thanks for the info. A group of experienced people can be a great help--I know I have learned alot from the Harvest forum about canning so I will check out yahoo's FS group. :)

Alton Brown recommended using dry ice for freezing strawberries. Faster freeze time, smaller ice crystals, firmer fruit upon thawing. Wonder if it would work well for tomatos? I may have to try it this year. If I can get slightly firmer fruit upon thawing, I think it would nake better chunky style sauce, no?

laurel-tx

farkee,

I would no longer recommend that FS group. There's a real strange weirdo there who jumps down peoples' throats and the owners/mods tolerate him. I'm outta there!

Here's a new Food Saver/food preservation group that can answer questions and they expect everyone to be polite. :wink:

[email]FoodSaverPlus@yahoogroups.com[/email]

Barb

Hi folks. Thought I would pull this thread up again as tonight I got some of my frozen tommys out and made a spag bol sauce with them. Just filled up the small sink with hot water from the tap and dropped them in. Left them while I chopped up an onion then pulled them out, peels fell off, cut out core bits and into the pot. Added the usual ingredients and meatballs. The flavour was fresh and wonderful.
The homemade pasta with fresh eggs was gosh darnoodley good as well :lol:

Freezing eggplant
 

Can it be done ? I'm growing more than my 2 plants this year and i don't have a dehydrator (yet!!) so i was wondering if it could be put up in the freezer ?

Try this,
[url]http://web1.msue.msu.edu/imp/mod01/01600697.html[/url]

Worth

Thanks Worth now i'll be able to have eggplant in the winter!

Your welcome Richard,
I have most of the answers right off of the top of my head but I like to post links to MSU or other reputable sites.
That way it won’t be a wives tale from a hillbilly.
The fruit fresh or citric acid is to keep the food from oxidizing and turning black.
NOT COOL!!
You have to work fast with egg plant.
A trick I use is to lay the stuff I don’t want to stick together out on wax paper in the freezer and let it get semi frozen.
I then put it/them in a zip lock bag, in this way you don’t have anything stuck together.
You can just pick out what you want and seal the bag back up.
I do this with fish, tomatoes, shrimp, pork chops, and just about every thing.
With soups and such you can fill the freezer bag about half full and remove the air.
Then lay the bags down flat and let them freeze.
Then it all goes into the large NOT frost free chest type freezer.
Of course I’m lucky enough to have two refrigerators and one large chest freezer.
It lasts for a very long time.
No worries!
Too bad we can’t freeze melons and have them come out fresh. :(

Worth

I was thinking about using the Dry Ice Method that Alton Brown use to freeze strawberry's.

get and Ice chest and fill the bottom and put dry ice in there. it would freeze the maters (strawberrys) faster. I will see if I can find it for you.

here is what the foodnetwork page says.

[QUOTE]1 quart strawberries, de-stemmed
1 (3 pound) block dry iceWash strawberries and place in a paper towel-lined colander. Cover with another paper towel and place in the refrigerator for 4 hours. Break your dry ice into small pieces, and toss with berries in a large bowl. Place into a container and cover with a towel. Place this in a cooler for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove berries and put into sealable bags and store in the freezer.
[/QUOTE]

I am still trying to find a video on youtube.

hmmmm... I'm curious about the dry ice method... seems like it would "burn" the tomatoes (or strawberries) if it came into direct contact... Did you ever try it?

I used Roma's in the food savers last year, i just put 4-6 clean ones in a bag and froze the bag, then opened the bag to get 1-2 and close the bag with food saves again. Nice

[quote=shlacm;174638]hmmmm... I'm curious about the dry ice method... seems like it would "burn" the tomatoes (or strawberries) if it came into direct contact... Did you ever try it?[/quote]

No way it would burn the berries. My company sells liquid nitrogen to shrimpers - they freeze the shrimp right on the boats. Considering LIN is at -196 deg Celsius and solid CO2 is at -78 deg Celsius, I can't see a problem.

It is known that liquid nitrogen produces a superior frozen product as it flash freezes foods retaining more moisture and not giving time for ice crystals to form which pierce cell walls and degrade the food. However it is more expensive than "mechanical" refrigeration (like using a conventional Freon type freezer with a compressor)

Just think about it - typical fruit goes in at room temp - 25 C. Normal freezer is 0 deg C. We all know from basic engineering that heat flux is proportional to delta T - that is why it costs more to heat your house in the dead of winter than a cool fall day.

Conventional freezer - delta T is 25 C
Dry ice - delta T is 105 C
LIN delta T is 225 C

Thus LIN has the capability of freezing 10x faster. I make ice cream in 5 minutes using LIN.

We have never tried freezing whole tomatos or even quartered ones. Maybe they will taste more like fresh.
We dump our toms into boiling hot water for a minute or so to split the peel, Then cool quickly. Peeling slips right off easily. We then cube them and pareboil a few minutes before dipping into freezer bags. We have found 3 yr old bags in the bottom of the chest freezer that had slight freezer burn but still made excellent spaghetti.
My frozen tomatoes taste almost identical to canned, not like the fresh which may be what was meant by "Off Taste" .

Me too. The best to freeze are plums tomatoes. I'll pop a few out and throw them in my lunch salad in the am--by lunch time the tomatoes have defrosted and mixed with the oil and vinegar in the salad--no texture of course--but great fresh tomato flavor. I've concluded that with the others, it is best to cook them down and freeze. In April and May, when I am crazy for a fresh tomato, I pour the cooked-down tomatoes on my eggs--on cheese sandwiches to toast--into my salad...now where is my straw???

I froze and canned tomatoes last year. The frozen ones are good in soups and Mexican dishes. I made spaghetti sauce using canned tomatoes and my wife and I loved that spaghetti!