Freezing parsnips and celery–should you or shouldn’t you? Veggies are best when they’re fresh, but if freezing is a great way of preserving your leftovers so that you don’t contribute to food waste. Here are our tips:
- Wash, peel (for parsnips) and cut into chunks.
- For parsnips, only try freezing with young or medium parsnips, and remove any fibrous cores. Old parsnips might be rubbery when thawed.
- Before freezing most veggies–blanch them first by popping them into boiling water for a couple of minutes. This will destroy the enzymes and bacteria within the veggies. Don’t skip this step for parsnips! It’s possible to skip it for celery, but you’d have to consume the celery within 2 months. And the celery won’t really retain its flavour.
- Don’t overcook! The parsnips will become rubbery.
- After the 2 minutes are up, remove from the hot water and plunge into a large bowl of ice water to cool them off. This will take 2-3 minutes.
- Pack up the chopped veggies into a freezer bag and squeeze out as much air as you can.
- Parsnips should be able to last you 6 months when frozen this way.
- Frozen celery will last you a year, but because celery’s mostly water, freezing does change its structure. It’d become mushy when thawed, which is OK if you’re cooking it as part of a mirepoix, soup or stew, but it won’t do you much good in a salad as it won’t have that lovely crunch.
- Happy eating!