Freezing potatoes, tomatoes and onions

Well, it's been a while. I went to London in September and when I got back I just lost the oomph for blogging. This was partly because there was just so much in the garden - 2009 was a mega year for fruit and vegetables. We ate most of the fruit as it came off the bush/tree, but the vegetables were so plentiful, preservation was required.

For once I didn't make any chutney. In our house this goes down as unforgiveable! I just never got around to it, partly I suppose because I actually had some work during the chutney making period so that took priority.

So, how to preserve vegetables? The great thing about the garden nowadays is that if you have a question you just tap it into a search engine and up comes the answer, or 110,000 of them, in an instant.

I have frozen potatoes successfully in the past, both as par-boiled (for roasting) and mashed (for re-heating and serving) and I did the same this year. However, I did store about 20 sacks (each containing 5-10 kilos) of potatoes in the barn and we are still eating these. Despite being stored in the cold and total dark, they have all started sprouting but not turning green. They still roast, boil and mash well so until they go green or rotten we'll eat those and keep the frozen potatoes for that period between none left and first earlies.

Tomatoes also freeze successfully and this year I just froze them whole. They are wonderful for pasta sauces - I just take them out of the freezer, run them under the tap (which makes their skins slip off easy as pie), chop them roughly and throw them in the pan. Easy.

Onions - well this was a new one on me. We had a fantastic crop of onions and shallots and as well as plaiting some I discovered that I could freeze onions - just chop them up and put them in a plastic bag. Use them straight from the freezer. I added a bag to the pasta sauce (and the faithful tomatoes) last night. It was excellent. However, remember that onions have a high water content so when they defreeze they are not quite the same consistency.