DinnerTool.com

Hi, I'm Ariane Duarte, and we're at home here in our DinnerTool kitchen, and I'm going to show you today some great tips and tricks for everyday cooking. A lot of us tend to overbuy vegetables. Today I'm going to show you a tip that, not only will save your vegetables, it's going to save you money. I am going to cut, blanch, and freeze this broccoli. This way I'll have it for later use. So basically I'm just making quick little florets here, cutting off the stem. You see how they just kind of fall right off. I have a pot of boiling, salted water on - very important to salt that water. It brings out the flavor of whatever vegetable you're cooking. Now my broccoli is all cut, my water is boiling. I'm going to just place my broccoli into the pot. And we're going to boil this for about one minute. The broccoli has been boiling for about a minute. It's beautiful. It's vibrant green. That's really what you're looking for. Right here I have an ice bath that we're going to shock the broccoli in. This will stop any more cooking of the broccoli. You want all those vitamins and nutrients to stay in there. To do this, you just kind of toss it to make sure it's all nice and cold. This is going to take about a minute. Now I'm going to strain this and get it ready to put in my freezer bags. So now our broccoli is strained. We're going to put it in some freezer bags, labeled and dated. This will store real well in your freezer for about three months. They're great to throw into pasta or rice, chicken - I have here some edamame peas, some spinach. These two are great when you buy them in the raw state to do the same exact thing. You can apply the same method with these. These are some of my favorites that I like to do. But not all vegetables freeze well. I have eggplant, peppers, and mushrooms. They all tend to have a high water content, and will pretty much mush if you freeze them. So I would use these right away, nice and fresh. So when you're getting ready to thaw your vegetables, if you're going to be stir frying or roasting your frozen vegetables, you can actually throw them right into the sauté pan or roasting pan in the frozen state, and they will nicely roast and defrost as they're cooking. If you prefer to defrost your vegetables, right in the bag, in the microwave, thirty seconds, strain off any of the extra liquid that's in there after defrosting them, and then they're ready for you to use. For more money-saving tips, go to DinnerTool.com