How to Freeze Blueberries

High in antioxidants, blueberries are considered a "super fruit." In order to reap the health benefits of these tasty little berries all year, while taking advantage of seasonal prices, freezing is an easy way to preserve them.

While there may technically be no "wrong" way to freeze, i discovered very quickly that just throwing fresh berries into a container and tossing it into the freezer becomes a frustrating method when it's time to retrieve them, because they stick together in one big, hard, lump.

I will show you the deceivingly simple way to keep your berries from sticking.

Step 1: Pick your Berries

For many of us, this may be as simple as finding a few boxes in the produce section with no mushy berries while they happen to be on sale. However, I highly suggest visiting a "pick your own" farm, if at all possible. These places offer bulk prices, and of course, you can be sure you're getting your berries at peak ripeness. Besides, it's a fun way to spend your morning!

Some tips for berry picking:

• Call ahead or check the farm's website to confirm availability; crops can vary greatly from year to year in both quantity and quality due to weather and over-picking
• Pick early in the morning, especially in hot weather, for peak flavor
• Bring containers if your farm doesn't provide them
• Dress comfortably; sometimes the best berries require reaching

I suggest picking as many as your freezer will hold. They get eaten faster than you expect. We brought home 17 lbs, and in a week and a half have probably already consumed or given away half.

Comments

[Tintan]

Thanks Hippie Mama, I just purchased several pints today at a decent price of 1.88 Canadian. Intuition said to do something like you said, but wondered about the rinsing especially. Very much like the glass container idea. I have many, but did not think of using if for the fruit. Cool! Beautiful pictures!

[Boowiggins]

Glass is smarter than risking Bisphenol A in most plastics...

[Yumeji]

You do know that most canning jar lids have a coat of BPA-containing plastic on them to prevent corrosion.

[Boowiggins]

Sure do! But still, if you stay below that lid the amount of food exposure to BPA should be much less than it would be if the food surface area made more contact with the BPA-ridden plastic.

[hippie_mama]

If you leave enough head space, the food will rarely if ever make any contact with the lid.

[Boowiggins]

I would surmise that the relatively small amount of BPA leechage into whatever possible condensation that may occur in that space for however long or short of time might be irrelevant in the face survival - "Long Live...The Fighters!"

[uzziah0]

We go blue berry picking every year near Braidwood, great fun, and better than store bought.
My sister-in-law freezes without washing, my wife washes (she towel dries them very well, so I think that helps a lot).
My wife freezes them on cookie sheets covered in wax paper. Usually overnight, since we're usually finishing up around 10 or so at night.
She puts them into zip lock bags, and uses a straw to suck the extra air out.
We use them in pancakes and smoothies or yogurt, but we also put them on breakfast cereal still frozen. They are good this way, better than if you defrosted them. If you defrost them they'll be too mushy.
My son loves them right out of the freezer as a snack.

Thanks for th ible.

[sunevesor]

Thanks for this. I have been freezing small round fruits like this for years, BUT...
putting the cloth on the tin is an excellent idea that I have not been using and I hated that the berries stuck to the tin. The cloth will help them release from the pan easier.
YEA! No more sticking!

[genera]

WHEN PICKING BLUEBERRIES I PICK THE BLUE ONES, WHY SO MANY COLOURS FOR CONTRAST?

[hippie_mama]

Because i had a 2-, 4-, and 6-year-old 'helping.'

[genera]

Just many different tastes in each mouthful huh.

[mathews98]

can you use this to freeze other berries like blackberries or raspberries and can you use it to freeze something not even berriesh like grapes as long as they're small and round?

[firefly68]

Works great for any fruit, but a couple of notes. Do NOT wash raspberries, blackberries, or other such multi-lobed berries before freezing, they will be tasteless. (If you're picking wild berries you may get the occasional little bug, which you can remove and set free outside, but you don't have to worry about pesticides or soil, so they really don't need washing.) Be sure to hull strawberries first; when thawed, strawbs will get mushy so are best used for smoothies and such. Another good way to do strawberries is to slice, combine with sugar, and freeze in 1 cup containers. The sugar will make a little sauce for shortcake. We pick wild blueberries here (yummmmm). To wash them easily, I place them in a bowl of water. The leaves and twigs and unripe or bad berries float to the top. I just skim them off, drain and pat dry the berries, and freeze as hippie_mama said. They can be packed tightly on a large cookie sheet, which can be flexed by gently twisting the opposite corners, and all the berries will pop free. Thanks hippie_mama, and a big thanks for letting your little helpers think they really helped! :-)

[hippie_mama]

Yes! I would use this method to freeze just about anything small and vaguely round.

[tekym]

The best way to freeze fruit is as quickly as possible, ie, via dry ice. Fast freezing doesn't let ice crystals grow very large; large ice crystals shred cell walls and lead to soft, leaky fruit when you thaw it.

[sandyhu26]

The reason your berries stuck together is because you washed them BEFORE freezing. The skins absorb the water and will be tougher later on. If you pick from a farm where they don't spray the berries, the worst thing that has been on them is your fingers, no joke. If you must wash them - like if you bought them from the supermarket - do it after you pull them from the freezer, before you put them in whatever you are cooking them in. You are working too hard!

[supitsgreg]

Lol, first thought was 'How did this get featured? Just stick 'em in the fridge!' How to properly freeze blubberies, more like it. Great 'ible tho!

[hippie_mama]

Well, as they say, one man's "DUH" is another man's "HOLY CRAP, I HAD NO IDEA!!!" For instance, i learned to refill a Brita pitcher filter through this site--i felt really stupid when i realized that all you have to do is replace the activated charcoal. Duh! I haven't done the math, but i'm guessing i've saved an embarrassing amount of cash with that one.

[snoopy11]

I froze blueberries in the plastic container they came in and when i defrosted them they were all mushy. They weren't firm like they were when i put them in the freezer...what did i do wrong?

[dacker]

Besides what hippie_mama said, the plastic containers have lots of air holes. This makes the berries dry out in the low temp/low humidity environment of your freezer, a.k.a. freezer burn. I freeze 15-20#/year and use zipper bags (e.g. Zip-Loc), taking time to evacuate as much air as possible. The generally flat design allows for faster freezing, they stack nicely and conform their shape to each other and to other items in the freezer, resulting in less wasted space.

[hippie_mama]

They do come out softer than they go in; i don't think there's any way around that with standard kitchen equipment.

[dhellew2]

The only way to freeze blue berries is to just stick them in the freezer right out of the box, unwashed. They will not stick together. When you use them dump some in a bowl, add cold water and presto they are washed. Dale

[fezrock]

Thanks for such a great, simple idea! Another preservation aid is to displace air in your jar or bag with CO2. I homebrew, and always have it on hand. Just let some flow in for a few seconds. The CO2 is heavier, and will displace the air with no special vacuum techniques needed. Then seal your container. This prevents excess oxidation and freezer burn from air's humidity.

[tswill2]

What's the connection between home brewing and CO2? tswill2

[Derin]

It's used to pressurize kegs of beer.

[fezrock]

Yes, and to carbonate it.

[Beergnome]

its also a by product of Fermentation

[fezrock]

Yes, but unless I bottle, I carbonate directly. Maybe one day I'll naturally ferment a batch as a whole. Still, the tank is primo for dispensing beer without introducing O2.

[Beergnome]

I do it for a living ;) we force carbonate as a rule. we only naturally carbonate for special order casks. our economy of scale doesn't allow otherwise.. fezrock it is possible to create a counter pressure rig for judging bottles for your homebrew, I'm sure there is an instructable for it,, if not there should be. it requires you creating an envelope of CO2 in the bottle, then having a T rig that will take the beer under pressure in the bottle with counter pressure of CO2 to keep the dissolved CO2 in the beer in solution. Its a bit of work, but if you care about competition at all. a clean bottle always bumps up the score.

[fezrock]

Nice career! I'm still quite the novice, but practice makes better! As to your question, I haven't seen anything like it. Topping the bottle out with CO2 would help the end product, but wouldn't do much for pressure loss. Nitrogen would be similar, but whichever is the heavier gas (not sure) would be marginally better for this lo-tech solution. On a small scale, if a sealed environment could be created to fit your capper around your cap, more gas pressure could be applied. I imagine an upright lever capper would be needed to work that out. Thanks for that idea seed! On a larger scale, if you could cap in a larger chamber, you could set the CO2/N2 pressure in the chamber to whatever you needed it to be. This would also give you space to insert your brew without introducing air. Or just overcarbonate the brew to make up for carbonation loss to outgassing. Crazy idea: add a small amount of dry ice without freezing the brew. (you don't need leftover yeasts anyway!) It sounds like a fun experiment, and could be adjusted to suit your pressure needs.

[hippie_mama]

I've never even heard of this method, but it sounds completely feasible. Now i know what i want to try next ;)

[Beergnome]

liquid Nitrogen!

[y2clay14]

I normally just wash the berries, and then leave them in the fridge on top of paper towels to dry for about a day. Once they are dry, you can freeze them without the clumping and you can eat them right out of the freezer!

[orangejuicedisco]

Does this method take away from the nutrient value at all?

[hippie_mama]

Long-term? Probably. Nothing is as nutritious in any form than it is when freshly picked.

[deckard1]

Think you are suppose to blanch the fruit to stop the enzymatic decay, degradation of nutrients and color that happens even at freezer temperatures. Virtually all commercially frozen fruits and vegetables are blanched for this reason.

[hippie_mama]

It should probably be mentioned that this isn't really for long-term storage.

[tswill2]

Hi hippie_mama, just a quick question - Why pick the red and the white berries (which are not ripe)? When I wa a kid (70 years ago) we left those on the bush for a few more days to get blue if the bears didn't get there before us. tswill2

[hippie_mama]

Mostly because i was picking with a 2, 4, and 6 year-old! Now that they're older, our berries come home more uniformly blue.

[The DNR]

Hi, I've frozen blueberries too and found them to be much better than the store-bought frozen blueberries. One tip that I might suggest: After rinsing the berries, they can be dried in a salad spinner and then be put directly into a jar or other container to freeze. I spin the blueberries pretty hard and haven't noticed any damage. After freezing I've noticed they stick together a little, but a light shake frees them all. This tip might save some time. However you freeze them, enjoy!