Flash Freezing

One of the main things that saves me tons of time in the kitchen is flash freezing veggies! The main ones I freeze are onions, celery and green bell peppers. I love adding all of these to my meals but some days I am just not in the mood to get onion juice all over my hands....or I just plain don't have the required item fresh. Living 7 miles outside of the city limits makes running to the store to pick up an onion impractical!

So my solution is to stock up on the veggies that I know that I am gonna use frequently when they go on sale at the local supermarket or when I make a trip to Sam's Club.

1. I chop everything up at one time

2. Place a single layer of them on my cookie sheets.

3. Pop them in the freezer for a couple of hours (or a couple of days when I get distracted and forget).

4. Then I take a spatula and scrape them all up, place them in a zip loc freezer bag and the next time I need a cup of chopped onions I just reach in my freezer and grab a handful!

I find this especially usful on celery...for some reason every recipe I have only calls for a small amount of celery...and my family is not real big on raw veggies, so I always end up with limp celery in my crisper before I can get it all used up. Now I just freeze what I don't use and have it for later!

Freezing them in a single layer keeps them from forming that hated block of onions that you get from placing them freshly cut in a bag! They are loose, easily measured, and compact! Just take out what you need and throw the bag back into the freezer!

Now I have only tried the three veggies mentioned above (onion, celery and green bell peppers) and they do great! What veggies do you freeze??