I have lots of summer fruits and end up having to throw them out. I'd like to make a fruit salad to freeze. Can anyone give me some help please? I don't have any canning equipment.
By Sandra from Newcastle, Australia
Add your voice! Click below to answer. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
Check out this link for freezing assorted fruits and veggies:
www.uga.edu/
Many fruits simply turn to mush when frozen and and thawed (even thawed in the refrigerator) and will need to be used in assorted recipes and things like smoothies. Unless they are 'just the right fruits' it's doubtfull they'll freeze well for fresh fruit salads.
I got a food dehydrator at a thrift shop and use that to dehydrate much of the fruit from my trees. I then put them in plastic bags in the refrigerator.
Greetings, you can also hydrate fruits in the oven or on a sunny day on a screen in the sun, it takes about 2 days and you need to bring them in at night to avoid extra moisture. Be sure to cover the fruit with cheesecloth to protect from bugs. This is not quite the answer you were looking but it does save the fruit, when my kids were at home I would chop and freeze fruits in small portions and we would eat them frozen, still do with my grandaughter. You may also try making fruit leather which holds up very well and can later be reconstituted into drinks (disovled in boiling water). Hope this helps some, wish you were closer I live in a big city not much room for orchards or gardens.
Add your voice! Click below to answer. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!
We have a cherry tree and sometimes buy fruit cheaply, but don't get it eaten as quickly as it ought to be. My next door neighbor gave me a blueberry (a huge one) that she'd frozen. That got me thinking, so when we harvested the cherries yesterday, I quickly put most of them in dollar store snack bags and tossed them into the freezer.
We've had a scorcher going on, and the humidity's been horrid. What a delicious, cooling treat the frozen cherries are today! We also have frozen raspberries, watermelon and blackberries.
By Cornelia from Oregon
Up here in Alaska where the berries are plentiful I pick about 20 cups of raspberries and blueberries every year. Here is my process. Pick them and then throw them on a cookie sheet to freeze for about 1.5-2 days. Then, I transfer them into zip-locs (or my favorite a reused cheese shaker). This way they do not freeze into a huge clump and will come out as individual berries. (07/07/2009)
I haven't had trouble with clumping too much. some pineapple clumped but they weren't hard to break free. The cherries clumped a tiny bit, maybe 4 (2 pairs) in a bag of 20 or so. I wonder if it depends on the type and brand of freezer? So for me, it's just a matter of tossing 3 or 4 handfuls into snack bags and tossing them into the freezer.
By Cornelia
I think clumping also depends on the berry or fruit. My strawberries clump, but not blueberries or cherries. Some berries have a smoother outer skin and won't naturally clump. Textured fruit, like strawberries or chopped pineapple, are more likely to stick together. (07/07/2009)
By Emily Pierce
Freezing fruit can be an easy way to enjoy the bounty of your garden and orchard all year round. Compared with other preservation methods, freezing saves time and nutrients, and keeps fruit fresh-tasting and colorful.
Contents include:
This article is available in PDF format. Click here to download it.
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, available online:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html
