Most housewives probably make blanks for the winter. Basically, these are blanks of vegetables that help the family in the winter period to diversify their diet and at the same time save. There are a lot of methods of harvesting vegetables for the winter period, and each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s look at the methods of harvesting vegetables for the winter in more detail.
The first method – freezing vegetables. It is good because almost all trace elements and vitamins are preserved in fresh vegetables. In addition, this method can be called little costly if your house already has a large freezer camera. It is better to carry freezing such vegetables as carrots, sweet bell pepper, green peas, eggplant, sorrel, asparagus beans and cauliflower. Before sending vegetables to the freezer, they must be prepared for storage – rinse, dry and cut. It is better to divide color cabbage into inflorescences, and peas and corn are recommended to freeze in grains. Bulgarian pepper before freezing, it is advisable to clean from seeds. Conduct the process of freezing this way – place the vegetables at some distance from each other on the pallets and freeze them in the freezer for about two hours. Then pour them into bags and again remove them to the freezer. Do not freeze the defrosted vegetables again – while they will lose most of their beneficial properties. So freeze the vegetables in small portions.
The next method of harvesting vegetables for the winter is a drying that is used by housewives not as often as freezing. Usually dry mushrooms and greens for the winter, less often – berries and fruits. Not everyone knows that, for example, carrots and chopped tomatoes, grated, can also be dried, and in winter to use as a seasoning for soup. The washed vegetables are cut, put on a baking sheet, which must first be sent to culinary parchment, and placed in the oven for several hours. Dried vegetables are recommended to be stored in tightly closed jars or fabric or paper bags.
A somewhat forgotten way to harvest vegetables for the winter, which is almost never used in large cities – this is the fermentation of vegetables. In this way, you can save cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, pepper. If you still decide to use it, then first you will need to cook a brine. It is easy to do this – you will need 1 kilogram of salt for 10 liters of boiled water for 10 liters of boiled water. Add it to the water and mix until completely dissolved. Kvasy vegetables in barrels, which before filling with vegetables, you also need to prepare. Take the garlic and rub the walls of your barrel, and on the bottom, be sure to put the leaves of blackcurrant, cherries and horseradish – this will avoid mold formation. Now you can proceed to the very process of laying vegetables. Rinse the vegetables, if necessary, cut, put in a barrel and pour the cooked brine. Cover the barrel with a lid and leave it at a temperature of 18-20 degrees. A few days later, the fermentation process will begin in it, which usually ends for 9-12 days from the moment of laying vegetables. Sauer vegetables under the appropriate conditions can be stored up to two years. Another advice to the housewives – when fermentation and during storage in the barrel, foam can form. This is considered normal. It must be periodically removed.
The last and most common way to harvest vegetables for the winter is conservation. The disadvantage of this method can be called the fact that in canned vegetables of vitamins and trace elements, very few. There are a lot of prescriptions of canning and pickling vegetables, so you should not stop in detail on one thing – for sure every housewife has its own “branded” recipe for pickling or canning vegetables.