Freezing or Canning?

[halo]

Since I am going to end up with a lot of wonderful chicken manure, I am planning on planting a smallish garden. I sorta got started by accident this winter. I found a couple of old packages of sugar snap peas, and threw them out on a spot I had and covered the peas with stall cleanings. Well, they are now about 5 foot tall, with zillions of blooms, so Im thinking Im going to have lots of peas here in a bit. Id love to be able to save all of what I harvest. Do you gardeners prefer to freeze or can? If you freeze, do you use one of those freezer bag machines that takes the air out of it?

 

[Guitartists]

Ok, this may or may not be true... but on an episode of Iron Chef America the ingredient was frozen peas. They used frozen because they said that the flash frozen peas were actually BETTER than the fresh ones. Go fig. Some more research is probably needed on the subject.

 

[AussieSharon]

My personal opinion is frozen tastes better than canned. My family has always frozen veggies and it's so easy to do.

 

[mcg30_40]

We can more than we freeze. If I had to guess it would be due to space in the freezer but that's just the way we've always done it. We freeze corn and sometimes peas but I always end up with freezer burn on the peas. I prefer canning.

 

[mandomama]

I freeze most things. can tomatoes, jelly's.

 

[halo]

Okay, I can certainly see the wisdom in canning tomatoes and jellies. So if I want to freeze these peas, how do you do it so that you don't get freezer burn?

 

[Ang]

Freeze them. You don't need anything to take all the air out. You can push most of the air out when you close the bag. Freezing is a lot less labor intensive than canning.

 

[redoak]

We vaccuum seal vegetables until our small freezer is full. It helps cut down on the freezer burn. We can what is acidic or doesn't taste bad with vinegar. We also root cellar potatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, onions, parsnip, carrots.

 

[mcg30_40]

Oh I forgot we freeze squash to use in cassaroles.

 

[sundance]

I'm lazy, I freeze everything, even tomatoes,I use the freezer zip lock bags and have had no problems.