 In Fargo we have great gardens this year and as I was thinking about how to present some information most easily Zoom came to mind because we've all become quite adept at using Zoom lately. So thank you again for joining me. I want to make some acknowledgments. Some of the slides actually most of them were adapted from the National Center for Home Food Preservation and that's out of the University of Georgia. So if you have additional questions we have a lot of resources but they also have a full website with more information and in fact I was just on it before this call looking for some information. As Bob mentioned most of the educational materials that are associated with field to fork were made possible through funding from the US Department of Agriculture. So we really appreciate your feedback and even let us know what other kinds of topics will be you'd be interested in learning about. And then I want to thank my program assistant Stephanie for helping create these beautiful slides. So it was really fun to see what she came up with. Now I hope I can do justice in presenting them. So thank you again. So today we are going to talk about some basics of food safety a little bit of microbiology so you can impress all your friends with your background and of course food preservation. On today's webinar I will be focusing on freezing produce for best quality and as Bob mentioned we will be looking at jams and jellies and pickles and salsa in the next couple weeks. So you all know where the participant list is I hope and I'd like you to raise your hand or give me a thumbs up or a yes if you have ever preserved food. Okay I'm seeing hands going up and by the way a copy of the handout that goes with this presentation is available on the field to fork website along with links to the associated publications I'll be talking about. So I see a lot of hands raised but there are 67 on this call right now and I should see 67 hands raised because we all preserve food on a daily basis that was a trick question. If you have a refrigerator or freezer you're preserving food. In fact as you heard from my background I have studied food science for all of my life and I learn more every day when any of us preserves food we are really behaving as scientists and so I'd like to walk through some of the terms to set the stage for what you will learn today as well as in the next couple weeks if we hopefully you will choose to rejoin us to hear more about those other topics. So food safety is interdisciplinary so it's a combination of biology chemistry microbiology physics you name it and what we're trying to do is have safe food all the time whether it's fresh whether it's refrigerated or whether it's canned or otherwise preserved. Food safety is when we take any kind of step that helps reduce or prevent the deterioration of food none of us wants to to throw away good food so this is a step to help avoid food waste which is a huge issue with one out of three pounds probably discarded in this country. So how do we preserve foods anyway? Well there's a lot of different methods and as I said all of you have preserved foods probably in the last even 24 hours. If you've cooked anything that is a short-term preservation method we are going to be talking in this series about longer-term preservation but thermal treatment means heating of course cold temperatures refrigerators freezers and so on. Then we have some higher-tech words osmotic inhibition this refers to the use of salt or sugar for example in making preserved food. So we use sugar in jellies and jams for example and that is it's part of the whole scientific principle of osmosis so we're preventing the bacteria from using the water. Chemicals sometimes are used and that can be ascorbic acid or it can be actual chemical preservatives. Fermentation is another method so if you like sauerkraut that is made possible through fermentation. If you like wine that is made possible through fermentation and we have these sorts of guides available within our website so if you're interested in learning how to make sauerkraut or even wine at home you can learn more on our website about that. Irradiation we're not going to learn about that too much today but if you have spices in your cupboard most likely they were treated with irradiation to inactivate bacteria and other microbes. And high-pressure processing that includes pressure canning so that's a method of destroying spores and I'm going to be teaching you a lot more about spores and vegetative organisms as we proceed today. And final one on my list is modified atmospheric packaging. So some of our snack foods and even fresh produce are maintained in their safe condition through map or modified atmosphere packaging. So that pulls out the oxygen and replaces it with nitrogen or another gas that extends the storage life. So we have lots of different methods of preserving food. But first let's talk a little bit about food spoilage. This is not a very pleasant picture is it? We don't like to find our food with cover with mold. So we are going to talk in the next couple slides about biological, chemical, and physical hazards that can get in our food and I'll try to draw those back to food preservation. So biological just means living, bio means life. So biological hazards are associated with live animals, us as humans, and also raw food products. So in this category of hazards we have bacteria, parasites, viruses which we're hearing way too much about but essential to learn more about viruses in today's pandemic, different types of fungus which includes molds and yeast, and also enzymes. So these are all living hazards so to speak. Some bacteria are actually good. So if you like yogurt that is a very beneficial type of bacteria, a culture that's actually good for our gut health. So biological hazards are the most common cause of foodborne illness and it's also what we really focus on in food preservation because we're trying to inactivate these organisms that could in some cases produce toxins that could be deadly in some cases. So these are the ones that we in food safety really focus on. Whether we're talking to people about safe grilling or safe cooking temperatures for meat or whether we're talking about canning food or otherwise preserving it. Chemical hazards are another form of hazard and so we can have naturally occurring or also man-made chemicals. So did you know that allergens are technically a naturally occurring chemical hazard? Toxins are also naturally occurring in many cases. Even that mold that you might see on vegetables or other foods in your refrigerator in some cases could make you very sick. So that's why if you see moldy jam in your refrigerator unfortunately I can't tell you to scrape it off and eat it. I mean that there could be a bit of a concern for getting sick from that. We also have man-made chemicals and this is why we want to handle our pesticides very carefully if we're gardening for example. So these agricultural or gardening chemicals can be a chemical hazard to us if they're not applied properly. So we have a whole educational program about pesticide safety within extension. We've all heard a lot about cleaning and sanitizing and if you want to hear more about it you can watch the coronavirus food safety presentation that I have archived on our field to fork website. I talk quite a bit about cleaning and sanitizing. These are all great. We all want to have a clean sanitized space especially now in the time of a pandemic but we also want to apply these safely and according to the directions on the package. So be sure that we're not going overboard with disinfecting and we are using those properly because otherwise they could be a chemical hazard within our food. Heavy metals can be a chemical that could cause problems and also some food additives can be considered hazardous in too high amounts. So these are all things to consider. Physical hazards whenever I ask the question of people what's the worst thing you could find in your food and in the chat box what do you think they tell me? So when I pose that question whether I'm talking to undergraduate students or professionals in the field what do you think the most common answer has been? Yeah I see the answer. Hair everyone thinks that hair is the worst thing they could possibly find in their food. It's disgusting granted but it's not the worst thing you could find in your food because these other biological hazards could actually make you sick or in some cases could kill you basically. So that's what we're trying to avoid today is anyone getting sick because of something they eat. Physical hazards include hair or any foreign object. It could be hard or soft so it could be soft plastic that gets in your food. It could be hard stones. It could be the diamond out of your wedding ring. It could be anything that we could see or touch that could get into our food and cause illness or injury whether that's choking or breaking your teeth. So sometimes these physical hazards can be introduced as a result of improper cleaning of the raw materials so this is why when we bring in food from our garden we want to be sure and wash it remove any little stones that might be there and so on. So those are the main categories of risky items that could be in our food and I'll ask you again in the chat what's the worst one? Which category of biological physical and chemical would be the most of concern? Okay I'm not seeing it yet. It's a multiple choice question so which is the worst biological chemical or physical? Biological. Yep and I'm seeing all kinds of interesting answers there so yeah I don't want to see bird poop in my food either but anything that's a biological risk is what we are most concerned about in food preservation or food safety in general. So good job. Thank you for interacting. So we are going to take a closer look at the biological category. These are the most targeted during our food preservation methods and once you understand all these basic principles I think everything else makes sense. I do want to caution you as you look for information on the internet on Pinterest you see it on Facebook if you're a Facebook follower. We can see some very hazardous recipes being shared about food preservation. I was just asked a question. I did a Google search myself and then I talked to my expert friends across the region and there were just so many really scary things out on the internet about food preservation that we all agree on that we we need you to be the ambassadors if you hear people doing unusual things because they saw it online it's not necessarily safe. So again let's take a closer look at this biological category. So this is where the terminology gets a little bit tricky but I do want you all to be aware of it because it all feeds into the overall topic of food safety and especially food preservation. So we can have three different categories of illnesses. We can have an infection that means that we've eaten enough food that contains live disease causing microorganisms. So for example if you eat a piece of raw chicken you don't grill it long enough and it's at 140 degrees internal temperature that is not high enough to kill potentially amylabacter or salmonella. So that would be an example of an infection. We also have a category called intoxication so tox you see that in there that means there's a toxin or a poison present a harmful chemical. If you've ever heard the term botulism which I bet you have botulism is an example of an intoxication because you are consuming a poison that is formed inside a jar because that jar of food has not been properly treated with heat to kill that organism. And then finally we have toxin mediated infection if you want to really impress your family you tell them all these terms tonight or maybe not. This means that you're eating foods that contain harmful microorganisms that contain a toxin that is formed inside of you. So you eat the food it lands inside of you and it forms a toxin and usually E. coli which you've probably heard of can form something called shiga toxin and that's why we want everyone to cook their ground beef burgers on their grill to at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit. So again these all play a role and they're all part of safe food and food safety it stands all the way from picking the food to storing it and reserving it if you have leftovers. So I really like these little slides because I had never seen something that explained this as well as this does. So let's see if I can do this justice. So microorganisms are greatest concern because they can cause illness and microorganism that just means really really small organisms living things. So we can have vegetative cells and they're showing they look like the little mice on the diagram and then we have the circles with the little organism inside those represent spores. So food can have both the vegetative cells or the spore cells. Spores are like little seeds it's like this organism has a protective coat like when we go out in the winter in North Dakota we have to have a coat on right. So the spore cells are protected and they will survive even heat you know 165 degrees Fahrenheit you could still have the spores survive. They're probably not going to make you sick you know because they're not inside the right environment to produce their toxic. Unfortunately if we don't cool food properly these little inactive spores can come to life. So we shock them by not quite heating them high enough and then they can produce a toxin and that could make you very sick. So this is a little diagram again that shows the differences between vegetative cells which are already live and spores the little protected cells. Spores are what we are worried about in food preservation and where do we get them? Spores are outside in the soil all over the place so that's what we're trying to kill during pressure canning for example. So if we take a look at this chart vegetative cells can reproduce while spores cannot. Vegetative cells can grow they can produce toxin and they are harmful of eating. They're not resistant to stress. The only ones that are resistant to stress like inadequate cooking are the spore cells so that's that's why they are the concern and why we say what we say in food preservation. This is why we have to pressure can vegetables to make them safe. We can freeze them to make them safe as you'll hear today but if you're going to put things in a jar and they're low acid foods like vegetables we have to use a pressure canner. So which kinds of microorganisms are of greatest concern? Well I'm sure if you're like most of us sometimes you find fun things in your refrigerator that you don't want to eat. Moles are among the aerobic microorganisms. Aerobic as you would guess means air or in the presence of oxygen so that's what I'm demeaning of that term. Moles likes a nice moist environment and it will grow between 68 and 95 degrees so temperatures like we've been having lately warm temperatures and also in your house it's probably 68 to 70 degrees for most of us so yes it will grow and they also these aerobic molds like a pH and a broad range two to 8.5 so it can be a very acidic item like your jelly or jam is quite acidic it can still grow mold and 8.5 is on that basic or alkaline end so stepping back a bit pH goes from 0 to 14 7 is neutral less than 7 is more acidic more than 7 is more is more alkaline so this will grow in a pretty broad range pH becomes extremely important in canning food and I will be focusing on that especially in the next couple weeks but I just want to introduce that concept. Now we have yeast and I'm not talking about the kind of yeast that you use to make bread necessarily I'm talking about the yeast that is typically can be found all around us. Yeast can be in the air you know it can be floating all over the place. Yeast is also aerobic it will grow in the presence of air but it can also survive when there isn't any air so if anyone has ever had a jar of pickles and it looks really cloudy or you know milky inside that means there's probably yeast present and that's spoiling those pickles and you know it's probably something you don't want to eat. Yeast likes a moist environment and again look at the temperature range 68 to 100 yep that's our house and that's outside so it will grow and it also likes this pH that goes into that acidic range remember below 7 up to 6.5 so just under neutral so it kind of likes things that are acidic so pickles loves pickles and then the ones that we are really concerned about again bacteria yeast and moles are more of a nuisance we can tell they're there bacteria we can't see them and they can survive both with air and without air they do like moisture and look at the temperature range 68 to 122 that's a pretty broad temperature range and they also like this pH of acidity level of slightly acidic up to that neutral range so again like I said you're all scientists today because these are important concepts that underlie all that we do in food preservation and especially canning if any of you are thinking about selling a food to the public or doing some cottage food type things these are especially important that you know your pH and if that's something that you're interested in actually having tested we do have a lab on campus that does pH testing for a fairly insignificant fee so I'm not going to go through this in detail but I just wanted to point out botulism on this chart if you think back that's the condition botulism is the disease or the illness and the cause is this toxin that's produced by clostridium botulinum and again that is our most hazardous organism in the world of food preservation how would you know if you had botulism unfortunately it doesn't happen too often but it can cause big problems and we have had certainly heard about outbreaks associated with clostridium botulinum can cause nausea vomiting diarrhea fatigue but maybe more notable symptoms would be double vision paralysis and respiratory failure so it's this is why we say as I said earlier low acid foods must be pressure canned unless they're acidified and canned foods we have to watch out for if you ever hear of a recall related to canned foods and you have them in your cupboard you need to get rid of those in a safe manner bring them back to the store or otherwise dispose of them honey can contain botulism botulinum spores that's why we shouldn't honey to infants under the age of one and in general the rule of thumb if you have home canned say green beans which have to be pressure canned best best method is actually to boil those before serving those and of course don't give honey to infants for that reason so if you've had a chance there's you take a look at these charts and the food and drug administration has something called the bad bug book so if you google that if you ever want to learn more about any of these organisms and what foods that are associated with them that's a great place to look okay let's get into some of the basics of food preservation we've probably all seen these handy dandy jars these are mason type jars this is what we recommend we recommend the jars with the two-piece lids and we want to always choose the best quality food to preserve you want to preserve the best eat the rest is the usual rhyme that we say food is not going to get better because we preserve it so we always want to select the best food and try to can it a say if you decide to freeze food or can it as close as you can to harvest then you're going to get your most nutritious your highest quality food so I mean I try to get it in the jars within you know a day less if possible it's going to be safe but we're talking quality as well so anyway again there's the two-piece lids I know there are lids that are reusable on the market and what we say to consumers who ask about that is you can expect more seal failures the national center for home food preservation has not done special testing on those reusable lids and say you can expect more seal failures and so on while we're on the topic briefly about lids one thing I want you to know because we do get a lot of questions on this topic is how to prepare the lids and when you buy the lids and remember they also have an expiration date the lids are the flat disc be sure that you treat those lids according to what it says on the on the box on the little package that comes with it we do not boil lids anymore like maybe our moms or grandmas or great grandmas might have done many years ago back well many years ago now they did change the type of plasticizer and boiling is not recommended so you follow what it says and treat those lids accordingly otherwise I've had people call me because their lids come unsealed and in some cases when they uh the lids actually blew off the the container but that was a whole other issue they hadn't water bath canned those after they made their jelly so anyway read the directions and we have all of as many things as I could think of to can is available free of charge you can download any of our publications and I feel confident that those are safe they come from USDA and the National Center again the parts we have the metal screw band the lid I talked about the sealing compound we don't want to use lids that are old and vented and deformed we also want to check the top of the jar to be sure that there aren't chips you can keep using jars for a long time but as soon as they become chipped or otherwise damaged it's time to use them and making a craft you know put some cotton balls in them or whatever you want to do and use them in other ways as long as they're not going to cut you when you use the the jar of course the other thing to mention and I see this happen a lot is that people leave the screw bands on the jars so technically when you're done and these are sealed and you hear that pleasant little ping that means of course you're going to leave them you know leave your jars to cool down 12 to 24 hours and then when before you put them in a cool dark dry place take that screw band off you can keep using that indefinitely as long as that doesn't get dented as well the reason we say that is so in case you had an issue and gas was forming you're not going to pop those those lids off so again some additional pieces about food preservation why do we heat we're doing our thermal process heat inactivates enzymes so for the purpose of today's talk as we get more into the freezing all fruits and vegetables contain some natural enzymes that if we don't inactivate these enzymes which are little protein molecules that can continue acting and can break down the vegetable color flavor texture and storage we want to launch them we want to heat inactivate these these compounds it won't necessarily make you safe but if you've ever thrown something in the freezer and maybe combine it with not putting it in the proper wrapping you might have a product that you really don't want to eat so you want to do your best in following all those rules for assuring that you're going to have the best possible product so the other thing that happens as we heat is that we're driving air out of the jar we don't want oxygen oxygen is something that is going to cause issues during the storage process and we want this nice seal to be formed in terms of canning so it holds the lid on the jar prevents the food from becoming contaminated and also prevents air from drying out the food so as we talk about freezing vegetables I will be suggesting highly that you push the air out of the package especially if you're using freezer bags another form of food preservation and we do have some information about drying making fruit leathers drying vegetables drying beef jerky that is a very easy method if you've never preserved food getting a home food dehydrator is not terribly expensive you also can use your oven but of course you have to watch out for young kids and pets and so on because you have to have the oven door slightly open with a fan on but that is another good method to preserve foods and it's also fun so again if you choose to dry or dehydrate foods store these in airtight containers and that helps minimize the moisture uptake you don't want them to get wet again after you've dried them and another thing that sometimes happens is that people grab any old bag that they have it might be a bread bag it might be just a food storage bag these sorts of bags are not as thick they're not designed to properly freeze vegetables and fruits and so on so always use freezer bags and they will be marked freezer bags and I know the other bags are less expensive but you don't want to waste your food so you want your food to be good quality and look like the food in the picture on the slide what we're doing is preventing freezer burn and freezer burn is not a food safety issue freezer burn is a quality issue and this just means that the food is getting dried out and it can take on flavors of anything nearby so you might not want to eat it it probably won't hurt you if you do eat it but who wants to eat something that tastes really bad uh some other items that I want you to consider when called for in the recipe to say formulation that you can get as I said from any extension organization across the country or the national center use the proper level of sugar or salt in some cases I'm always giving you exceptions here some cases you can leave out the salt so if you have pressure can in green beans and you don't want to add salt that's totally fine if you're making pickles and you don't want to add salt that's not fine because the salt is there to help preserve the pickles and we'll talk more about pickles next week so as I've alluded to earlier we have two main categories of foods in food preservation we have those that contain acid remember those are I'll ask you the question if our foods that contain acid low pH or high pH so if you had an acid food would it have a low pH or a high pH but good job you got it um there's some very interesting and somewhat difficult terminology when we get into some of these things that I have to have my brain on straight um those that contain little to no acid are called low acid foods those that contain acid are acid foods and again as I said pH is the measure of acidity um 0 to 14 7s neutral and below that is more in the acid range so here um I have some brand new information actually there there are some formerly okay to to preserve foods that now we're saying we should not um so white peaches if you happen to see those we don't have safe methods for those so it's always important to keep up with the latest guidance and again really I can't emphasize it enough don't don't believe everything you might see on some blogger sites and Pinterest sites I could find you any kind of recommendation in the universe and the only ones that we in extension can give you are those that are tested so acid foods are generally all fruits including jams and jellies so if you've never canned anything before jams and jellies are a fun place to start um tomatoes and figs are borderline so as we'll hear in a couple weeks a lot more um tomatoes have to have added bottled lemon juice or citric acid in the specified amount sauerkraut if you like sauerkraut that's very acidic pH below 4.6 and pickles are certainly acidic and then we have our low acid high pH foods so remember those are opposite of each other all the vegetables meats poultry seafood soups most mixtures of acid and low acid foods and that can be spaghetti sauce especially if it has meats and vegetables all of these have to be pressure canned if they're not acidified in some way so it's certainly possible to take our tomatoes which are kind of borderline add the acid that's called for and process those as directed and have a safe product you you could boil green beans in jars for days and that won't be enough because we have to reach 240 degrees at least to reach the point where those spores you remember our little bacteria wearing coats um that's the only way we can inactivate those so again really important if you know anyone who's water bath canning green beans or canning them in the oven we don't ever recommend oven canning please stop them because it could be a very hazardous thing for them their families and any friends who get to share what they've made so really important that we follow these safe guidance okay next question for you raise your hand or the put a yes if you've ever frozen homegrown food okay i'm seeing lots of you have if you've never done it again jellies and jams freezing these are great places to start in home food preservation excellent ways to do it and you can have an excellent end product to enjoy you know next next winter so we're going to start with fruits and then we'll go into vegetables so again it's pretty easy freezing fruit is probably the easiest of all for best quality we do recommend that you use your frozen fruit within 12 months and also maintain your freezer temperature at zero Fahrenheit or lower if you don't have um if you do not have a freezer thermometer that would be something i would suggest that you get because it's important that we maintain that low enough because that will maintain the quality of your product it will stay safe even if it gets you know 10 degrees or five degrees but your storage life goes down accordingly so most fruits can be frozen um quality will vary depending on the kind of fruit the maturity and the type of pack so i'll be talking a little bit about the types of pack and this is all included on the handout that is linked with your information that we provided so begin by selecting your best as i talked about um we want our fruits to be firm we want them to be flavorful they're not going to get better because we froze them so they're gonna uh they're going to be at the level they were when you put them in your packaging so wash small quantities at a time and avoid brushing in other ways bruising and don't let your fruit soak because fruit is already very high in water it has lots of pores you don't want it to become water logged so don't put it in a big sink of water a big you know container of water it could lose its quality and its flavor get strange colored things like that so there are some things that can happen with fruit we can have discoloration we can have darkening i'm sure you've all eaten an apple and you notice when it sits next to you it'll start discoloring because of the natural enzymes apricots peaches nectarines pears also can darken so there are ways to prevent darkening we can certainly use a solution of vitamin c also called ascorbic acid we can make lemon juice or citric acid mixtures don't come in or we can steam because what we're trying to do is inactivate enzymes and we also can pack fruits to maintain their quality and again this is all information that we've provided in our handouts on extension resource sites so we can have a syrup pack an unsweetened pack a sugar pack a dry pack a tray pack or a sugar replacement pack so i'm going to talk briefly about each of those and the other concept i want to mention and explain what it means if you're new to canning you might not be familiar with head space you're going to see that term used whether you're canning or freezing foods that just means the space between the top of the food and the top of the container so that's the head space and there are different recommendations in freezing we leave some space because of course water expands when it when it freezes so it's going to take up more space in your container so leave appropriate amounts so for example if we use a liquid pack where the fruit is packed in a juice syrup or water in a pint container with a wide opening you'd leave a half inch on the other hand if you had a narrow top opening you'd leave three four cents because it doesn't have as much room to expand so really important to read these directions thoroughly again best quality is what you're looking for so syrup pack you might have seen something where it talks about 10 syrup 20 percent 50 percent or if you go to the grocery store and you pick up something in heavy syrup or light syrup this is what they're talking about and you can do this kind of thing at home as well so typically we recommend a 40 solution for best quality i'm not talking as a nutrition specialist right now i'm talking about a food science and a quality specialist because anytime we add syrup and sugar we're adding calories but we're talking quality so in the case of a 40 syrup it's two and three four cups of white granulated sugar to four cups and then you get five and a third cups of syrup and what this does is help maintain the quality and structure of your frozen fruit and there are other packs as well but again this you don't have to memorize this this is all on the handout set we have there are other ways of packing fruit we have a pectin pack pectin is a type of carbohydrate we usually use the pectin pack for berries cherries peaches you don't use as much sugar and you retain a nice fruit flavor color and texture so they all have advantages we have the unsweetened pack so if you're really watching how much sugar you're consuming calories basically you're covering the fruit and water and that fruit has some vitamin c or ascorbic acid or juice but unfortunately this yields a lower quality product than those packed with sugar the sugar kind of pulls out the juice and helps retain that structure and then we have the sugar pack and this is where you sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and then you mix it until the juice is drawn out and the sugar dissolves very simple works really well with peaches and plums and strawberries and cherries so very easy to do then we could have a dry pack so if you have berries and you want to put them into a freezer container push them down a little bit if you want or leave them whole seal it and freeze it's pretty simple i like this next pack this is really handy and some of you've probably done this basically you have a a tray and you put a single layer of fruit whether that's strawberries or some other berries and you put it in your freezer so as it's frozen you put it into your freezer bags and then you put it back in the freezer right away before they melt so then you have your individual fruits and you don't have any sugar on them if you like a little sweetness you can also use but you don't want the calories you can use an artificial sweetener like aspartame doesn't furnish the beneficial effects of the others and you will see a harder freeze so it's not going to have the same texture but these are all methods you'll just have to decide which one you like and which meets your needs the best so again when we're packing we want to choose containers that are meant for freezer storage that are moisture proof durability proof and don't ever forget to label what the contents are you know you may think you're going to remember that you put them in a certain colored container for example but you know most of us aren't going to remember that so label them with the date and we want to prevent the loss of moisture and the freezer burn thawing best to leave them to thaw in an unopened package and if you're going to serve these fresh or not fresh or you're going to serve them as a dessert for example a topping of a shortcake or you're going to put them in a salad just let them partially thaw and put them in then they'll have a better texture because anytime you freeze something you're you're going to break those cells and they're going to be kind of flabby and maybe softer than you'd like for pies thaw until the fruit can be separated or if you want to do something really fun you can make say apples frozen apples you can mix it all up and freeze the whole chunk in a pie shell let it freeze take it out put it in a freezer bag and later just put that seasoned trunk into a pie crust and you're ready to go so that's kind of a fun fun way to do that and saves time in the long run so on our website we have this guide and i'm going to quickly go through um freezing vegetables next so this is again linked by bob thanks bob on our field of work site so let's talk quickly about freezing vegetables same kinds of principles apply most vegetables will do very well unfortunately some things like cabbage and green onions lettuce salad greens i saw somebody make a comment about um zucchini radishes cucumbers potatoes tomatoes they don't necessarily freeze well they could have use in your menu but usually more in a cooked dish for example tomatoes are fine if you're going to use your frozen tomatoes in spaghetti sauce or potatoes do well if you for example made hash browns again same rules apply as for the earlier mentioned containers just make sure they're freezer containers freezer bags and push out the air the excess air in the in the case of freezer bags um the big difference in between our fruits and our vegetables is that most vegetables require this blanching step and if you harken back to me talking about enzymes remember those little chemical modifiers or those little proteins that are in a lot of in us as well as in our fruits and vegetables we do need to inactivate these natural chemicals because if we don't our vegetables may discolor they may toughen and this also leads to a brighter color so for example if you pick up green beans in a can versus frozen you're going to definitely notice that the frozen green beans have that nice bright green color whereas the can green beans have that more olive green color so two different levels of heat treatment cause that change in color remember that all the blanching time will vary with the size and the type of vegetable so they all have different times and we're not going to go through this but I just put this in because this is a chart out of your handout that goes through from a to turnips let's see what do I have artichokes to turnips uh how long to blanch so we count our blanching time our heat treatment time from the time the water is boiling after you put the vegetable in so you want to start with boiling water put your vegetable in bring to a boil and count at the point it reboils so if you were a corn in the cob season so I'll just grab one of those so if you have small ears of corn and you want to blanch them and freeze them it's seven minutes blanching time large years eleven minutes so again you'll have all this in your hands or online however you like to read things so we can do blanching in three different ways I just described boiling water with just a basket or a colander or whatever you can also use steam and a wire basket or the kettle or you can use your microwave but that's not as effective and these enzymes can live because we can have hot spots when we're cooking in a microwave or blanching in a microwave so the boiling water or the steam are probably the best methods once we've cooked these or blanched these for the desired time then it's really important to cool them fast and it's going to take about a pound of ice per pound of vegetables so it's going to be worth your time unless you have a lot of ice in your cupboard you might want to buy a large bag of of ice to use it so you take your basket of blanched vegetables plunge them into a cold pool of ice cold water and then change that water until your vegetables are nice and cool down because we don't want to keep them cooking so otherwise they'll end up with an overcooked texture so we have a couple slides left remember if you're using rigid containers that you leave a half-inch head space if you're using freezer bags we're going to get rid of that air we don't want freezer burn to happen so we're going to press it out and another little tip for some of you might even like to make freezer meals but they tend to stack nicer if you you know put them in your freezer bag press out the air lay them flat and freeze them flat on a tray if you have room in your freezer and then you can stack them just like a you know a deck of cards so nice and flat will store a lot easier than bags of vegetables that's my tip of the day so there are different methods of packing vegetables you can do solid pack you put them in the freezer containers you do the loose pack so again similar to what we talked about with tray packing for fruits so a single layer on a tray which is a tray not try and then you place them in a container dry pack after blanching you pack and freeze immediately or tray pack packers them quickly so when you buy those nice vegetables in the grocery store which I would bet all of you do at some point I hope you do we want you to eat vegetables you'll notice that they are individual and that's called individual quick frozen that's the kind that people like because we can pour out as much as we want so this tray pack is good for making your own IQF or individually quick frozen vegetables so that you could actually use part of your bag and then put return it to the freezer so tray pack is pretty handy for that how to use them cook without thawing except for corn on the cob it's best to partially thaw before cooking so that it's heated thoroughly because that's a lot of space a lot of density so partially thaw those cook until tender to your liking you can use water or steam or microwave and microwave is certainly an excellent way for cooking frozen vegetables and finally again we have linked this if you ever forget where to find our stuff just google NDSU extension food and I'll take you to our main page and look at food preservation we are continually adding more things to our field to fork site and as Bob mentioned at the beginning we have at least 55 webinars that are archived so if you want to learn anything you want about butterflies and entomology and pesticides pressure canning we have a lot of experts that have donated their time to us to to provide our long seminars so again thank you for your attention and I'm willing to stay on for a while it's about three o'clock but I will try to answer any questions that you have and I hope you'll join us again next week we'll learn about jams jellies and pickles thanks so much Julie great presentation a reminder before we take a couple of questions that you will be getting an email with the survey on today's presentation so please go ahead and complete that if you can that she'll go out in a couple of minutes so you should see it you know in the next five or six minutes I do see a couple of questions here Julie what here's one about freezing zucchini the person asking the question is saying that it turned pretty snotty so do you have so do you have any tips on freezing zucchini so it does not turn snotty um well that's unfortunately an aspect of zucchini it's so high in water that's why it's so low in calories that there's not a good way to get around it what I'd suggest is that you drain it thoroughly because you'll get a lot of liquid that'll come out you know when during the freezing process and then it's it's certainly fine to use that to make zucchini muffins but you want to get rid of all that excess liquid and you know fluid because that will affect your final product so that's about the only thing I have for you thanks Julie and another one on potatoes a lot of potatoes that they have and they like to vac you see the vacuum seal them do they par boil them or before they freeze or freeze them raw what's the best way to treat potatoes I would actually suggest because of the enzyme activity in potatoes that you partially cook them and we do have a method on how to do that so you want to heat them you might even want to pre treat them with some anti browning solution but now go ahead to our freezing vegetable guide we have a huge one we have the one I showed you but we also have a compendium of freezing information as well so definitely if you don't heat treat the potatoes they will turn brown or even black and I've had that question several times through the years so you want to you know take the best steps they don't do too well with freezing if you want to make french fries you're going to get a better product or if you want to make pre cook hash browns grate them cook them grate them and even pat them into the shape that seems to be a pretty good product in the end one more question here how do we convince people that old recipe books may be dangerous to use for food preservation whether canning or freezing that's the million dollar question so if anyone has an idea for all of us an extension we run into that throughout the country all my counter parts and extension always get that oh my grandma always did it we always did it I guess an analogy I like to say is that you don't get hit by a poverty time you walk across the street without looking both ways but the one time that you do you know what could happen so there's an element of risk and the thing to remember is that these canning recommendations are updated and so if you have an old canning book um back in 1994 so that's already 25 years ago 26 years ago they revamped all of the recommendations for home canning so if you have something older than that don't use it if you have grandma's recipe frame it but it's not necessarily safe so you know the other thing I want you all to be careful of is of course I've lambasted the the internet but also be careful about some of these new devices that are showing up on tv even in infomercials where famous chefs are even advising to can in instant pots or in these other devices and none of that has been sufficiently tested and a couple weeks ago is on a call with the people who produce ball jars and so on and you know they too are very concerned with all of the proliferation of inaccurate information that's just going out wildly in the public and I also see canning in ovens and someone even was canning in a bathtub in their backyard believe it or not that we're an open fire so not in North Dakota so just letting people know that things change we have to adapt with the changes in technology and science as we all know because of the state we're in right now in the world okay um let's see Diane's asking about the handout and that should be on the field of fork website right Julie um just go ahead and field the fork and click on the big webinars banner at the top and you'll see the handouts there that's also where the recording of this session will be posted as soon as we have that ready we'll be sending out an email letting you know that recording is available as well so I don't see any other questions so thanks so much for everyone attending today and all your great questions and feedback in the chat hope you'll join us next week next wednesday for let's make jams jillies and pickles and then on august 5th let's preserve tomatoes and salsa thanks so much for joining us thanks julie great job yes thank you