Speaker 1:
Many people are growing and preserving their own foods.

Maybe to save money, maybe to support local growers, maybe to so you know exactly what ingredients are used in the food you prepare and serve to your family.

Whatever the reason it's important you use safe food preservation methods.

So in the long run your food is safe to eat.

Hi, I'm Linnette Goard, Field Specialist in Food Safety with Ohio State University Extension.

And today we're going to be putting our food away our processing our food through freezing.

And freezing is one of the easiest ways to keep your food longer and save the nutrients in your food.

And there's there's many containers that you can use to do that.

Some of them that we have here today and are freezer-safe containers.

Are the plastic bags that are freezer quality or freezer containers that are a nice rigid container making sure they have a good solid well-fitting lid.

We can even freeze in our canning jars making sure that you leave at least an inch head-space for that if you're freezing in the jars.

We're going to freeze some green beans today.

So the first step in the process is to wash them.
 
Okay we washed our beans we're now ready to snap them or cut them.

To snap them you really you just snap the ends off.

And we try to make them into about one inch length or bite size pieces.

If we want to cut them then we're just going to cut the ends off.

And you're going to cut off any bad parts.

The next step will be to blanch them and with vegetables we need to blanch them to stop the enzyme growth.

What happens is the enzymes allow them to continue ripening.

And we don't want that to happen.

Blanching is basically putting them in hot boiling water for a specified period of time.

Or you can steam blanch them which is what we're going to do today.

We have a basket steamer and then you have to add one and a half times.

So we're going to steam blanch them for five minutes.

So that will be our next process.

When that time is is finished you're going to immediately plunge them into cold water or even cold water with a little bit of ice in it.

From this point we could take our beans and put them directly into our freezer safe containers.

But what we're going to do today is show you how to tray freeze.

To do that get a tray and put your beans out in just a single layer on that tray.

This will then go in to the freezer and we'll leave it in there for an hour or two until they're just partially frozen.

And then we can break them up and put them into the container.

That way they're individually quick frozen and they don't clump and ice together in your container.

While our beans are in the freezer on the tray, we'll go ahead and fill another container.

And simply put them in there.

We're going to leave a little bit of space at the top but not a lot.

The key is to get the lid on securely.

Because you don't want the air to be in there.

And so one of the things you want to do is what we call burp it.

And to do that you just pick up on the end and push down and get as much air as possible out of there.

The other key when you're freezing.

Don't freeze too much at one time because you're going to raise the temperature of your freezer.

And you want to keep your freezer temperature at zero degrees.

And so have a good thermometer that you can check that.

Okay this one's done.

Let's go check on the tray.

These are ready to package.

And as I said before these will be individually quick frozen.

And so you can take as many out of the container as you want to.

They won't be frozen in a clump.

Okay now let's seal it up.

Make sure you get that lid on tight.

And don't forget to give that little burp to get rid of that excess air.

Make sure that you label it with the contents and date it.

Our green beans can last in our freezer as long as your freezer is at zero degrees, will last six to nine months.

For more information on freezing your vegetables you can go to our website at fcs.osu.edu and click on the home food preservation tab.