Preserving the Harvest: How to Freeze Bell Peppers

Mmmmm, peppers!  I LOVE bell peppers!  We eat them sliced and dipped in dressing, on salads, in eggs, tacos, fajitas, chili, soups, pasta, etc.  They are so flavorful as well as nutritious. 

Before we grew them in our garden, I tried to stock up on them at Aldi whenever they had a good sale.  I would buy several packages, but we could never eat them all before they went bad.  Many times I just chopped them up and put them in freezer bags.  What I ended up with though was a frozen pepper block that had to be used all together.  Not so good when you want to just use a certain amount!  My freezing method was all wrong. 

Here's how I do it now:

1.  Wash your peppers well, especially if they came from your garden.  (I picked all of these in one morning!  I hadn't picked in about 10 days. Wow!)

2.  Slice them up and spread a single layer in a baking pan or cookie sheet.  I did some pans in slices because we like that for tacos, fajitas and some pastas and I did other pans diced into little chunks for soups, etc.  Place in freezer and allow them to freeze for at least 24 hours.  (Mine look a little frosty here because I had just taken them from the freezer.)

 

 

3.  Remove from cookie sheets with a spatula, place in freezer bags, label and throw in the freezer! 

It is so nice to have ingredients like this already chopped and ready to go...makes meal prep so much faster!  (While these are not good used in place of fresh peppers for something like salad, they are perfect for recipes where you saute them, etc.) From all the peppers shown in the pictures, I got 2 gallon bags and 2 quart bags packed full, plus my kids ate several in the process.  Since most recipes only call for 1/2 to 1 cup of peppers, this should last a while.  Hooray!

*Note:  You can also do onions this way...again, makes meal prep nice and easy!

{Don't know what to do with all of those green beans or cucumbers? Read here and here to find out!}