Gardening Advice & Tips for Irish Gardeners

One of the best & easiest fruit or vegetable to freeze for the winter is the humble pepper. Whether you chose to do this with ones that you have bought in the supermarket, the farmer's market or preferably, ones that you have grown yourself, it's as easy as pie.

Why are Peppers so Good for Freezing?

Well, a lot if not most produce require some blanching before freezing to preserve texture, nutrients and taste etc. Peppers do not require blanching, so as long as you wash and dry them well, you can pop them in the freezer and enjoy them at a later date. A point to note is that like pretty much all fruit and veg, Peppers will be best if cooked from frozen. They can be thawed and eaten but in reality you are best to used them as I say from frozend in the likes of stir frys, soups, lasagne etc, basically whatever takes your fancy.

Steps to Freezing Peppers

There isn't much too it really and I have outlined the procedure below with pictures

Step 1 - Pick the Peppers from your plants in the Greenhouse or Pollytunnel

Obviously if yours are store or market bought, you can ignore this step.

Use a small sharp knife and cut off at the stem being careful not to disturb or damage the samller peppers you intend to leave on the plant for later picking. If you have smaller ones on the plant that look like they might be on the turn (going bad), cut these off too, you can still use them, just cut out the bad bits later on in the process.

Step 2 - Core & Wash the Peppers

The next step of the procedure is basically wash and core the peppers. What I tend to do is first, with the stem facing upwards, cut around it, into the pepper and then pull the stem out. This tends to remove most, if not all of the core in one go and as an added bonus, you save more of the pepper for freezing than if you just slice accross the top as some folks do. I then slice down the middle of the pepper, cutting it into two halves on the vertical and proceed to give it a good wash on the inside, to remove any left over seeds and remove excess fleshy bits and the outside also. At this point I make sure to check the peppers for any bad bits that might be on it them and cut them out.

Step 3 - Slice the Peppers

The next thing to do is basically the cutting or slicing of your peppers into whatever shape you desire. Myself, I'm not that particular and generally do some in thin slices and other in chunky pieces. As mentioned before, I tend to use my frozen peppers in Stir Frys and winter soups so I'm not too fussy about the shapes although having said that, I do prefer the long thing strips in my stir frys but it's your own preference here really. It's all good...........

Step 4 - Drying the Peppers

An important step in the procedure, I find, is the drying of the peppers. The drier they are going into the freezer, the better and it will make it easier for you to take portions out from a freezer bag or freezer tub later on in the year. Obviously water freezes and if they are wet, you will end up with a great big lump of frozen peppers and it will make it difficult to get individual portions from a large bag. If you put them into portion sized bags, it's not such a big deal but there is the point to consider that you will have a lot of water to come off them when you are cooking them, a point to note if in a stir fry etc but again not so important if making soup with them.

To dry them, I usually, as I'm washing them, place them in a colander to let water drain off them. When I am finished washing them all, I take the colander and give it a good shake over the sink. I then empty them on to a clean and dry tea towel on the kitchen table and leave the for a bit. Periodically I will gather up the ends of the towel and give them a shake inside the towel also. I find this great but obviously you can only use the 1 tea towel on each batch. I suppose ideally if you were to be OCD on it, you could use a secondary tea towel to get the last of the water off them, it's up to yourself. I just use the one per batch.

Step 5 - How will I store the Peppers in the Freezer?

You have a couple of options here really. Myself I just use good quality zip locked freezer bags. Some people, and I have done this before just use freezer tubs and put all the peppers in there, but these days I just use the bags. You don't have to use zip locked bags, you can buy cheaper ones that you just tie in a knot at the top but I just find the zip lock ones handy. I usually mark the contents on the label and also date them so I know later in the year which are older and which are newly picked.

Step 6 - Bag the Peppers

Pretty much what it says on the tin! Just something to note when bagging the peppers that I have learned over the years.

Don't over fill the bags - I normally just fill 30-50%

This is because even if the peppers are dry, they tend to stick together sometimes, so to help avoid this don't over fill the bag and it allows you to arrange them flat while initially freezing them. This will limit their sticking together. You can see a picture below of what I mean.

Also when arranging them like this in the freezer bag, you must also place them like this in the freezer, not on top of one another initially until they are frozen. The freezing process takes a few hours and periodically you should open the freezer and give them a quick 'scrunch around'. It will help avoid them sticking together. Once frozen (and not stuck together), you can put them in anyway you like in the freezer.

Another point to note while bagging the peppers is to make sure you get all or as much of the air out of the bag before sealing, apart from anything else, it makes the bag more compact for storage and allows you to get more in the freezer.

That's it so, hopefully you found this informative and you will be able to enjoy your own peppers deep into winter this year.