Agriculture Canada trying to preserve quality of frozen vegetables
In Canada, late summer and early fall is the time for home canning and freezing the garden's bounty.…In Canada, late summer and early fall is the time for home canning and freezing the garden's bounty. Anyone who has done home preserving will tell you that blanching vegetables before freezing them is crucial to maintaining edible quality.
Now a team with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's St-Hyacinthe Research Development Centre is re-examining the usual way of heat-treating vegetables before they're frozen. The team is developing a system of partially drying vegetables using low doses of microwaves combined with a vacuum process, to avoid the breakdown of vegetable tissue that happens with freezing and thawing.
The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada team worked with Bonduelle Amerique as part of the Canadian Food Innovator research cluster.
According to lethbridgenewsnow.com, they have found that coating vegetables with antimicrobial protection in the lab before freezing has been very effective. They now have to try the procedure commercially, to determine if it is a practical solution.
