Hi all.

I'm trying to figure out what to do with a bunch of celery and bag of potatoes before they go bad on me. I was thinking of pre-preparing them for meals, specifically shredding the potatoes to later make hashbrowns from them (shredding would probably be my best option seeing this bag of potatoes is filled with spuds of weird shapes), and chopping the celery to throw into who knows what.

I've looked up how to prepare these things, and everywhere says that these two need to be blanched before freezing due to their water content. Now, there'd be no issue there, however, every site I come across states that they need to be laid out on a pan, put in the freezer while on the pan, and then bagged afterwards.

My main issue here is that while I have space in the freezer for the final product, because of the freezer being shared by myself and my roommates, there's not enough space to fit a baking pan in the freezer. I was wondering if I could simply put the otherwise finished product in a bag for freezing while skipping the flash-freeze on a baking sheet step, or if consequences would come from skipping it.

I’d imagine the main concern is it freezing in a big lump. If you freeze them on a tray first, they don’t stick together as much when you bag them.

The reasons for spreading the pieces out on a cookie sheet are 1. to freeze them quickly so the middle doesn't stay tepid too long, and also 2. to freeze them separately so they can be portioned out later, the bag can be squashed into whatever shape there's room for in the freezer, and they can be thawed quickly/evenly or even cooked from frozen. This step doesn't take terribly long though. See if there's a way to temporarily arrange the frozen foods and slide a cookie sheet on top. Or if it's the dimensions of the freezer itself, what will fit that you could spread a thin layer on? Even dinner plates could work, although that means doing small batches which is more work. You're supposed to have drained and cold-water-shocked them, so they won't be hot, won't defrost anything else. Push comes to shove, you put just enough in a ziploc bag that you can flatten it out to a centimeter and freeze them that way. Don't stack the bags until each is fully frozen.

What if you did ziploc bags of one or two servings, flattened them, and froze those?

I freeze veggies all the time (mostly onions, peppers, carrots, potatoes) and Jo, they don't need to be blanched first.

But they will behave differently than fresh - onions and peppers are soft once thawed, and require higher heat to wilt as the moisture comes out faster.

I would cut them up, lay them on a tray and freeze, then bag. If you freeze in the bag they clump together and are a pain to work with.

Potatoes I make into something (roasted for example), and don't cook fully so when I reheat they have some moisture left.

To add to what others have said, the reason you want to spread things out is that slow freezing means big ice crystals which destroy cell walls and make things mushy. That's also why you dont want to thaw and refreeze foods cause the texture just gets bad.

Celery probably doesnt matter, though, if you just end up using it for mirepoix where you end up cooking it down anyway.

I can't find a reference now, but I heard a radio show many years ago about the benefits of "freezer blanching". If I can remember it right, putting veggies directly in the freezer without blanching will cause intercellular ice crystals to form which will pierce the cell walls and cause the vegetable to take on a partially cooked texture, much like water blanching. The advantage is that the nutrients in the vegetable are all contained in the bag so that when you toss the frozen vegetable into soup, chili or whatever, you retain all of the original nutrients.

If you're looking to freeze vegetables for eating directly, like corn, peas, beans, this will probably not work so well. For vegetables which will be added to a stew, soup, chili or similar, the difference is negligible.

I've done this with tomatoes for sauce or soup, carrots, onions, celery, peppers, and other vegetables that I'll toss into a soup or chili for garden fresh flavors in the middle of winter.