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[QUESTION] Is there a way to blanche vegetables for freezing without a flash freeze step? (piefed.ca)
submitted 2 days ago by OliveBrittle@piefed.ca to c/cooking@lemmy.world
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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.

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[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago

The reasons for spreading the pieces out on a cookie sheet are 1. to freeze them quickly so the middle doesn't stay tepid too long, and also 2. to freeze them separately so they can be portioned out later, the bag can be squashed into whatever shape there's room for in the freezer, and they can be thawed quickly/evenly or even cooked from frozen. This step doesn't take terribly long though. See if there's a way to temporarily arrange the frozen foods and slide a cookie sheet on top. Or if it's the dimensions of the freezer itself, what will fit that you could spread a thin layer on? Even dinner plates could work, although that means doing small batches which is more work. You're supposed to have drained and cold-water-shocked them, so they won't be hot, won't defrost anything else. Push comes to shove, you put just enough in a ziploc bag that you can flatten it out to a centimeter and freeze them that way. Don't stack the bags until each is fully frozen.

this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2026
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