What do I do with a glut of vegetables?
Preserving, freezing and cooking a sudden excess of one vegetable before it goes to waste.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 1 hr
- Read
- 2 min
Short answer
Freeze what freezes well after a quick blanch, turn soft vegetables into soup or sauce and freeze that, and pickle or ferment what suits it. Doing something within two days is worth more than doing the perfect thing next week.
A glut is a timing problem. The vegetables are fine now and will not be in a week, so the question is which of a few processing routes fits the vegetable and the time you have.
What you'll need
- Freezer bags or containers
- Large pan
- Jars (optional)
- Vinegar and salt (optional)
Step by step
- Sort by condition first.Anything already soft or damaged gets used today. Firm produce can wait a day or two and take a slower route.
- Blanch and freeze what freezes well.Beans, peas, broccoli, carrots, sweetcorn. Two minutes in boiling water, then straight into iced water, drain, dry and freeze flat.
- Turn soft or watery vegetables into soup and freeze that.Courgettes, tomatoes, spinach. Soup freezes better than the raw vegetable and is a finished meal rather than an ingredient.
- Roast and freeze anything dense.Roasted vegetables freeze well and go into pasta, soups and salads. It also concentrates the flavour rather than diluting it.
- Pickle what suits it.Cucumbers, beetroot, onions, carrots, cabbage. A quick pickle of vinegar, water, sugar and salt takes ten minutes and keeps for weeks in the fridge.
- Make a sauce, chutney or ferment for a large tomato or cucumber glut.Tomato sauce, chutney, or a salt ferment. All turn a short-lived excess into something that keeps for months.
- Give some away.Neighbours, colleagues, a food-sharing group. Faster than any preservation method and it usually comes back around.
- Grate and freeze in portions if nothing else fits.Courgettes and carrots grate and freeze well, and go straight into cakes, fritters and sauces from frozen.
Tips
- Blanching before freezing matters — it stops the enzymes that cause off-flavours and texture loss. Unblanched vegetables deteriorate noticeably within a month or two.
- Freeze flat in bags. It stacks efficiently and thaws in minutes rather than hours.
- Next season, stagger the sowing by a few weeks. A glut usually means everything was sown on the same day.
Common mistakes
- Waiting for a plan while the vegetables deteriorate — Freezing something roughly today beats preserving it perfectly next week, by which point it is compost.
- Freezing vegetables without blanching — Enzymes continue working in the freezer, causing off-flavours and mushy texture within a couple of months.
- Freezing everything in one large container — It thaws slowly and forces you to use it all at once. Portions are far more useful.
Questions people ask
Do I need to blanch vegetables before freezing?
For most, yes. Two minutes in boiling water then straight into iced water stops the enzymes that cause off-flavours and texture loss during freezer storage.
What can I do with too many courgettes?
Grate and freeze in portions for cakes and fritters, make soup and freeze it, roast them, or make a chutney. Grating and freezing is the fastest route for a large quantity.