What is the best way to freeze raspberries for the winter?

It’s not at all difficult to freeze raspberries for the winter in the freezer. On cold winter days, berries can be added to tea, compote, cottage cheese, porridge, and cake filling. Particularly relevant raspberry frost remains for summer residents who do not have time to properly process their crops. To preserve vitamins and taste of berries as much as possible, you need to freeze them according to certain rules.

Is there any benefit in frozen berries?

Many have wondered whether the beneficial qualities of berries after freezing are preserved. Fresh raspberries are rich in vitamins, fragrant and tasty. But what happens to her during the freezing process?

You can reassure those who seek to make the most of their products. If the correct technology was used for freezing and the packaging was airtight, then the berries will not lose all their valuable qualities until spring.

In frozen raspberries, vitamins are fully stored for 8 months. In winter, you can buy fresh berries far from everywhere, they are expensive, and there are great doubts about the benefits of the product. Therefore, a blank made in the freezer will always come in handy.

So that raspberries do not lose their shape and useful properties before use, it must not only be properly frozen, but also properly thawed. Berries are removed from the freezer 1–1.5 hours before consumption and transferred to a refrigerator, where the defrosting process will occur gradually. It will be possible to eat raspberries after complete thawing. But it’s better to cook compote from frozen berries, immediately throwing them into boiling water.

Preparing raspberries for freezing

Before proceeding to the collection of berries, you need to calculate how much of them will be needed in the winter for freezing. Part of the harvest will probably go to make jam and stewed fruit, part will be eaten fresh. Having decided on the volume of the harvest, berries are picked.

Keeping the crop fresh is permissible no more than 2 days. With each passing hour, the amount of vitamins in the berries is rapidly decreasing, so ideally you should begin to freeze raspberries as soon as they bring them home.

Preparation of raw materials for freezing looks like this:

1. It is necessary to reject all spoiled, rumpled, overripe fruits.
2. Together with them, particles of vegetable debris that are in the same container are removed.
3. Berries are gently washed under a gentle stream of water so as not to disturb their integrity.
4. Then the fruits are transferred for drying on a tray, distributing them in one layer.

Since raspberries belong to soft berries, in the process of preparation it is necessary to expose them as little as possible to physical impact, so as not to mash. That is why it is not dried on a towel, but immediately placed on a tray, where it will go through the first stage of freezing.

Freezing and storage rules

Raspberries can be frozen both in a separate freezer and in the refrigerator using its freezer. Modern household appliances have the ability to accelerate freezing, allow you to adjust the temperature and maintain it at a given level during the storage of products.

If the berries are frozen slowly, ice crystals will form inside the pulp, which will break the fibers and disrupt the structure of the fruit. Therefore, it is important that the set temperature is reached quickly:

1. In the upper section of the freezer, as a rule, there is a narrow compartment designed for quick freezing of bulk products.It is there that you will need to place a tray with raspberries and turn on the accelerated or continuous freezing mode.
2. After the berries are seized, they are removed and quickly poured into plastic containers or special bags for storing frozen foods.

Now raspberries can be compactly stored until spring. It is better to decompose it in small portions for use at a time - it is much more convenient.

You can not thaw and re-freeze the fruits, their quality suffers from this and vitamins are lost. If you neglect the rules for the preparation and storage of frozen berries, they can not only become useless and tasteless, but also cause indigestion.

Sugar blanks for winter

Prepare raspberry blanks for the winter with sugar by freezing in various ways. For example, using the following recipes:

• Raw jam. For cooking, take the selected washed raspberries and sugar in a 1: 1 ratio. Those who have already used a similar recipe recommend adding sugar to taste, then it will take less. After all, as you know, sweets do not benefit health at all. Grate the berries with sugar with a tablespoon or use a blender for this purpose. The resulting sweet berry puree is laid out portionwise in small containers. If you have to make many different blanks, it is better to sign the jars in advance.
• Raspberries in sugar syrup. The prepared berries are laid out in plastic trays and poured with a syrup prepared from 2 glasses of water and 1 glass of sugar (the syrup is kept on fire until sugar is completely dissolved, and then cooled). Top trays are closed with a lid. If disposable plastic cups are used as containers, they are tightened with cling film. The containers must be positioned steadily so that they do not tip over and freeze out during freezing.
• Berries sprinkled with sugar. Raspberries are placed in plastic containers, pouring each layer with sugar. The last layer is necessarily sugar. On top of the container close and provide a signed label. Consumption: 200 g of berries - 2 tbsp. l granulated sugar.

The healing qualities of raspberries are not unknown, therefore, in the season of colds, preparations from fresh berries will support the body and provide it with a vitamin cocktail. Fruits can be used as an independent dish, toppings, home baking decoration. Berries are suitable for diet and baby food, can be the basis for cosmetic masks. Freezing is a great way to keep raspberries intact for a long time.