Cabbage is a healthy vegetable that is widely used in many national cuisines all over the world. You can eat it boiled, fried, blanched or steamed in many different ways and even raw!
How to freeze cabbage so that it saves all the useful elements and vitamins it has? Keep on reading to know the answer!
How to Freeze Cabbage. Useful and Easy Prompts
Cabbage, no matter which sort of it, is extremely healthy! If you want to strengthen your immune system, cabbage is an irreplaceable vegetable on your table.
This vegetable has lots of vitamins including vitamins C, K, B6 and A. In addition, it is filled with minerals and microelements such as calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, and riboflavin. It is full of fiber and antioxidants and includes very few calories, too.
No wonder that people often want to preserve cabbage for further use at home!
But how do you freeze cabbage at all? In fact, even despite the opinion that cabbage (or some sorts of it) is hard to freeze and store, this vegetable is pretty easy to keep fresh and eatable. What is even better about this is that it won’t require you any super efforts and much time!
- Take cabbage and a bowl, a box or any other container you will put the vegetable in afterward and don’t forget about a cutting board!
- If the cabbage comes from your own garden or it was purchased directly from a farmer, wash it thoroughly before starting to prepare for freezing. Simply take off its outside leaves and immerse the cabbage head into cold water.
Like that, you will get rid of the warms and grit if there are any on the vegetable or between its leaves.
- After half an hour, take it out, shake to remove the remaining liquid and dry.
- If your cabbage comes from a store, rinsing it will be enough.
- Cut your cabbage and blanch in boiling water for two minutes to destroy any harmful bacteria.
- After blanching, remove it to the cold water immediately. Then shake it harshly to delete the water and flash freeze the vegetable (use a cooking sheet for this purpose).
- When the cabbage is frozen enough, put it in the box or another container you chose and leave in the freezer.
It is essential to ensure that you squeezed all the possible air out of the containers so that the cabbage won’t get a freezing burn.
When following such an instruction, people may often wonder: how to blanch cabbage for freezing? In fact, there is nothing complicated about it at all. Just immerse the cabbage cut in pieces into the boiling water and let it stay there for two minutes. No longer boiling is needed, otherwise, the vegetable will turn too soft.
Can you freeze raw cabbage?
One more thing that may bother you is whether freezing cabbage without blanching is possible.
In fact, it’s absolutely possible to freeze a raw cabbage if you need it or if you want to. Simply wash it if your cabbage was bought at the farm market and dry properly. After that, you can put it in the airtight bag or box and send it to the freezer.
The only thing you have to remember is that, after being frozen raw, your cabbage must be used within the next four to eight weeks.
Whole Or Cut? How to Freeze Cabbage
Another issue that sometimes confuses people is whether it is allowed to freeze cut or whole cabbage. Well, let’s figure this out once and for all!
Can you freeze chopped cabbage?
- Take off the external leaves
- Wash the vegetable
- Let it float in the water for half an hour to delete worms and grit
- Dry it thoroughly and chop it as fine as you need
- If it needs to dry more, let it do so, and afterward put the chopped cabbage to the container and leave to freeze
If you deal with a cabbage bought in a store, simply rinse it, dry, then chop and send it to freeze!
Can you freeze a head of cabbage?
- Take off its external leaves
- Simply wash the cabbage and let it dry thoroughly
- Ensure there is no dirt or worms on it left
- Put the cabbage head to the plastic bag, squeeze out the air and freez
Is it ok freezing cabbage leaves?
Freezing cabbage leaves is possible, too. All you need to do is:
- to take off its external leaves
- take apart its leaves and wash them thoroughly
- dry the leaves with a paper towel
- blanch them or, if you don’t want to, simply put the cabbage leaves in a box or another container and freeze
Freezing Different Sorts of Cabbage. Detailed Instruction for Newbies
There are many different sorts of cabbage, that’s why we may often ask ourselves how to preserve the particular sort of cabbage using the freezer.
Let’s try to clarify this issue.
To begin with, the methods described above work well for the white cabbage. Can you freeze red cabbage the same way, for example? Yes, it is possible. The procedure remains the same as for the white cabbage.
Can you freeze napa cabbage? Yes again! And again, just follow the steps described above to freeze it right.
Nevertheless, the main thing you must consider is that any cabbage has a lot of water in it and, after being defrosted, it will become soft and mushy. That is why defrosted cabbage is better to be used in cooked recipes.
These cabbage-freezing tips will allow you to preserve the vegetable for use when cooking many delicious dishes with it!
