3 most useful ways to harvest vegetables and fruits for the winter

Is it pos­si­ble to make veg­eta­bles and fruits pre­pared for the win­ter healthy? We talk about the three best ways to save the max­i­mum of vit­a­mins in home­made prepa­ra­tions.

1. Freezing vegetables and fruits

The most use­ful blanks are obtained by freez­ing.

Berries and fruits washed with run­ning water (with­out bruis­es and abra­sions) of medi­um ripeness (not over­ripe) are frozen in a spe­cial com­part­ment of the refrig­er­a­tor in bulk, and then, for com­pact stor­age, they are col­lect­ed in bags or oth­er con­tain­ers.

It is so easy to har­vest straw­ber­ries, wild straw­ber­ries, cur­rants, rasp­ber­ries, blue­ber­ries, goose­ber­ries, etc. for the win­ter. Cher­ries, apri­cots, plums should be pit­ted before freez­ing.

It must be remem­bered that you can defrost berries, fruits and herbs only once, at room tem­per­a­ture, with­out forc­ing the process with boil­ing water, steam or hot air, which destroys the use­ful com­po­nents of the prod­uct.

After defrost­ing, it may change col­or and tex­ture, which is not a sign of its deprav­i­ty. Just in the evening, trans­fer the prod­uct from the freez­er to the shelf in the usu­al com­part­ment, mak­ing sure that the water formed from the ice has some­where to col­lect, and an excel­lent fruit or berry break­fast will be ready by morn­ing.

Pump­kin, zuc­chi­ni, chopped into cubes are frozen, pars­ley, white cab­bage and spinach are fine­ly chopped, and sor­rel, peas, dill, onion arrows are frozen whole. Frozen gar­den and gar­den gifts retain their max­i­mum use­ful prop­er­ties for about six months, despite the pos­si­ble rel­a­tive unsight­li­ness of their appear­ance.

Thawed veg­eta­bles for the best pos­si­ble preser­va­tion of vit­a­mins and oth­er use­ful sub­stances are rec­om­mend­ed to be cooked in a dou­ble boil­er. A din­ner of such veg­eta­bles and herbs is an excel­lent low-calo­rie step towards los­ing weight.

2. Drying fruits and vegetables for the winter

The next safest type of har­vest­ing for the win­ter is dry­ing.

Some sub­stances (for exam­ple, vit­a­mins and microele­ments) become more con­cen­trat­ed in a dried prod­uct than in a fresh prod­uct due to the evap­o­ra­tion of “extra” water mol­e­cules.

Fruits of impec­ca­ble qual­i­ty, crushed and slight­ly unripe, are dried in the sun or in an oven or a spe­cial elec­tric dry­er. The first is prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble with­out insect lar­vae and bac­te­ria get­ting into the har­vest­ed mate­r­i­al, because they pen­e­trate fab­ric or gauze and are in com­fort­able con­di­tions such as a ther­mo­stat.

For dry­ing fruits (apples, pears, plums, apri­cots) and berries under the influ­ence of elec­tric ener­gy (in an indus­tri­al dry­er), it is rec­om­mend­ed to process them in a strong solu­tion of sodi­um chlo­ride or soda. Such an impact turns the prod­uct, accord­ing to many nutri­tion­ists, into “dead”. How­ev­er, if you do not use any, even the sim­plest, preser­v­a­tives, then the appear­ance of the blanks may leave much to be desired.

The appear­ance of light fruits is espe­cial­ly affect­ed, inevitably oxi­diz­ing in the air, they dark­en. But plain-look­ing dried apples and pears with health ben­e­fits can replace choco­late, sweets and oth­er sweets in win­ter with­out any pri­or prepa­ra­tion.

With­out the use of salt and soda, it is easy to pre­pare rose hips, moun­tain ash, pars­ley, dill, basil for the win­ter by dry­ing. Per­haps the fruits of the gar­den and veg­etable gar­den frozen and dried for the win­ter are the most use­ful “preser­va­tions” that do not need to be “enno­bled” before inges­tion.

All oth­er meth­ods of prepar­ing veg­eta­bles and fruits for long-term stor­age are fraught with com­po­nents that are prob­lem­at­ic in terms of effects on the body.

3. Fermentation (fermentation)

Fer­ment­ed prod­ucts are one of the old­est ways to make prepa­ra­tions; peo­ple used them back in the Stone Age, when salt was not avail­able to every­one and not every­where. Of course, since then we have moved far ahead on all fronts of devel­op­ment, but many peo­ple today will not refuse to eat sauer­kraut!

Fer­men­ta­tion is a great way not only to pre­serve, but also to increase the amount of nutri­ents in the prod­uct. In addi­tion to the abun­dance of vit­a­mins B and C, fer­ment­ed foods will be one of the best pre­bi­otics for intesti­nal microflo­ra — that is, a nutri­ent medi­um in which ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria will thrive.

How­ev­er, fer­men­ta­tion also has its draw­backs. First­ly, in such ways it will be pos­si­ble to save only a cer­tain amount of veg­eta­bles and fruits. Cucum­bers, cab­bage, apples, toma­toes, zuc­chi­ni, water­mel­ons are tra­di­tion­al­ly fer­ment­ed. Sec­ond­ly, fer­ment­ed foods acquire a rather spe­cif­ic taste that not every­one likes.

But what about conservation?

Home­made “spins” in glass jars under a met­al lid inevitably con­tain a large amount of table salt, vine­gar and sug­ar in var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions. These preser­v­a­tives give, for exam­ple, cucum­bers and toma­toes a very attrac­tive taste. Here are just a min­i­mum of use­ful sub­stances there, except for fiber, which is not com­plete­ly destroyed by boil­ing water and the ster­il­iza­tion process.

Some house­wives even add aspirin and cit­ric acid to the brine, which is a blow to com­mon sense. Such prepa­ra­tions for the win­ter can cause an exac­er­ba­tion of chron­ic ail­ments of the gas­troin­testi­nal tract and kid­neys, pro­voke sharp drops in blood pres­sure in hyper­ten­sive patients.

Even a prac­ti­cal­ly healthy per­son after exces­sive con­sump­tion of pick­led cucum­bers or toma­toes may be forced to con­sult a doc­tor.

It is the small amount of canned food eat­en that is the only pro­tec­tion against the adverse effects of canned food. Less is bet­ter. Canned indus­tri­al prod­ucts are less dan­ger­ous, as they are reli­ably ster­il­ized, but their con­sump­tion as part of a healthy lifestyle is not log­i­cal.