Hi again y’all,
Sorry for flooding the community, but I’m currently been trying to find new recipes to work with, and came across one that called for fresh green beans. I have a bag of frozen ones, and am curious as to whether or not I can use the frozen ones I have as a substitute.
In general I was curious that if I were to substitute fresh produce with frozen, if there would be anything I’d need to keep in mind. Would the cooking time differ? Would I need to thaw the frozen produce prior? Is some produce unable to be substituted with frozen equivalents?
Thanks for help in advance.
It depends on a veggie/fruit. I don’t have much experience with frozen fruits so I will stay on a veggie side of the question.
So, in order to freeze veggies, usually you would blanche it first. It will reduce the volume. As a rule of thumb one unit of frozen veggies would replace a one to 1.5 unit of fresh ones - depends on a veggie. On top of that frozen veggies could release more water when cooking. Next, frozen veggies need less cooking time.
Few other things to consider:
Less cooking time? Why’s that? I would have assumed the opposite considering they would need time to be brought to the same temp, no?
In most cases frozen veggies are blanched before freezing. Blanching is nothing more like boiling fresh veggies and rapidly cooling them off. The process makes veggies already per-cooked. Another thing to consider is that freezing veggies will break the cells (the magic of water crystals breaking the veggie cells) which makes the veggies softer.