Agriculture Canada working to preserve the quality of frozen vegetables
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St-Hyacinthe, Que. — Late summer and fall is the time for home canning and freezing the garden’s bounty. Anyone who has done home preserving, can tell you that blanching vegetables before freezing them, is crucial to maintaining edible quality.
Commercial producers use the same blanching process before freezing vegetables, to ensure food safety and minimize freezer burn. But, it can still impact the product’s taste, texture, and nutritional value
A team with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s St-Hyacinthe Research Development Centre is re-examining the usual way of heat-treating vegetables before they’re frozen.
The team is developing a system of partially drying vegetables using low doses of microwaves combined with a vacuum process, to avoid the breakdown of vegetable tissue that happens with freezing and thawing.
