When you lot're making a adept southern meal or merely adding a few new tastes to your tabular array, collard greens are a good way to add season and texture. Boiled, steamed, baked, or even fried, collard greens have become a staple in many meals.

Still, the mystery behind preserving them can make many people scratch their heads.

Can You Freeze Collard Greens?
Can You Freeze Collard Greens Yep, for upward to 12 months. Read below to know how.

Can You lot Freeze Collard Greens

You tin freeze collard greens that take already been cooked for up to 12 months, placing them in small plastic numberless and allowing them to freeze as-is. Some of the best meals tin be spiced upwardly past calculation a few of the already cooked collard greens during the cooking procedure. When freezing collard greens, you must ensure no extra liquids or moisture is in the purse as water can crystalize when freezing.

There are more ways that you lot tin prepare collard greens than only steaming and storing, with most people making nearly complete meals when they demand to shop the greens. To use your collard greens to their full potential, you volition have to piece of work on understanding more nigh the vegetable. There are many things that you demand to know and some nuances about the plants that, if they're not followed, tin can cause issues.

Can You lot Freeze Raw Collard Greens?

Sorting collard greens on a dishcloth.
Cook them offset

When you have a newly bought batch of fresh collard greens, it may seem intimidating to kickoff boiling all of them before freezing, especially if y'all have a smaller kitchen. This is why many people have started to freeze their collard greens while they are nonetheless fresh, giving them the aforementioned shelf life equally boiled collard greens.

The complicated procedure starts when you lot want to utilize your fresh collard greens that have been frozen, with the processes needed to melt them properly taking longer. While you can simply add frozen, boiled, collard greens to any dish you are making, fresh collard greens that accept been frozen demand to be prepared differently.

To make dishes using uncooked frozen collard greens, you will have to get-go with the collard greens, commonly boiling or steaming them until they are done before adding any other ingredients. This allows the collard greens to lose their toughness and become much more palatable, turning them back into a delicious source of Vitamin C and other nutrients.

Can Collard Greens Be Frozen After Cooking?

Collard greens cooked made into a nice salad.
Yes, that is the all-time way to freeze them. Already cooked!

Collard greens are traditionally frozen after cooking, commonly in minor bags that are ready to use and be added into any dish where you lot may want to use them. Cooked and frozen collard greens are entirely safe and succulent to eat, with many of the recipes that you lot may find requiring that the collard greens be frozen before yous add them.

Freezing collard greens became popular owing to the amount of work that needs to get into cooking them. The boiling, steaming, or cooking process to make collard greens soft and edible can have several hours, and doing small batches at a fourth dimension tin be extremely time-consuming. Almost all collard greens are boiled in the modern earth and then frozen to extend their shelf life from a few days to several months.

You must remember that frozen collard greens do not lose any of their vitamins or nutrients, something that can happen to other frozen vegetables. Many dishes that call for collard greens, instantly become a lot healthier and will permit you to relish the repast without having to feel guilty nigh eating "simply a tad more."

Do Y'all Have To Blanch Collard Greens Before Freezing?

Picture of collard greens in icy water
Blanching your collard greens, although no essential in the freezing process, volition bring out more than colour and flavor

Yous do not have to flinch your collard greens before freezing them, every bit they are perfectly happy being frozen every bit is. If you lot want the full flavors of the greens when you practice get-go cooking them, it may be improve to blanch them before freezing.

Information technology is believed that blanching collard greens, the process of cooking them rapidly in salted water, draw out more flavor and colors in the collard greens than but freezing them. Usually, you can taste the difference when using fair-skinned frozen collard greens and normal collard greens.

Nevertheless, some believe this same effect can be reached when the frozen collard greens are prepared the aforementioned way after thawing them. This belief arose from the natural added season and color that salt adds to any dish. The only real way to decide which is ameliorate is by trying both and finding the training that yous prefer.

How Do You Prepare Collard Greens For Freezing?

prepare collard greens for freezing
Make clean them, put them in humid water so transfer them to icy water

The traditional mode of preparing collard greens starts by cleaning the greens, blanching them, and then putting the freshly blanched collard greens in a saucepan of ice h2o. After this, you remove the collard greens by using a colander and so bagging each set of collard greens, placing them in the refrigerator.

Placing the blanched greens in ice water subsequently blanching chop-chop cools down the collard greens, which many encounter as a step of pre-freezing them. Helping to lock the flavors in even further, which makes the collard greens so much amend when you do starting time to use them in your dishes.

An important step that you should always include, even with fresh collard greens, is wiping them downwards with a newspaper towel. This may seem odd, only reducing the amount of moisture that is on elevation of the leaves will save them for the long run, allowing the collard greens to comfortably stay fresh without near of the taste existence lost to the frozen h2o.

What Is The Best Style To Freeze Fresh Collard Greens?

freeze collard greens
Vacuum packed them

Freezing fresh greens can be more complicated than simply throwing them in a amorphous and allowing them to freeze. While this can exist washed for the maximum amount of taste to be kept for the long-term it is best to vacuum pack so freeze the collard greens. This ensures that the minimum amount of ice crystals tin can course within the leaves.

Almost of the time, you lot can simply use Ziploc bags and freeze the collard greens. It is still vital that you remove as much moisture from the greens equally possible. The biggest enemy of any vegetable that is being frozen is the germination of water ice crystals. Non merely can these cause a massive amount of harm to the tissue of the vegetables, they negatively touch the taste.

This is ordinarily why you can buy some vegetables as flash-frozen, which is the process of freezing things so fast that normal water ice crystals don't take shape. When yous are freezing your fresh collard greens, information technology may exist helpful to ensure that your freezer is properly cold simply not too cold, as freezer burn can occur if the greens are against something common cold.

How Exercise You lot Reheat Frozen Collard Greens?

freeze collard greens
Add them to your dish

Reheating collard greens is the simplest step in the process. If they are already cooked, then you tin simply add together them to your dish. The collard greens will unfreeze in the dish every bit everything is being cooked and may even help y'all cool the dish downwardly if you are getting ready to add in ingredients that savor lower heats.

Fresh collard greens that have been frozen have a slightly more complicated route to take, with the greens having to exist cooked before being added to whatever dish. This step tin can add extra season to fresh collard greens that pre-cooked collard greens may not savour. Humid, steaming, frying, or broiling are all ways that you can cook the greens, delivering you a great dish.

Considering collard greens are a vegetable, they can technically be eaten raw. Still, that may be a bit tough on your teeth. Most families have their unique fashion of preparing and eating collard greens, and finding your preferred way tin can be a good footstep in becoming a cooking master.

We have a wonderful recipe that features collard greens, aslope zucchini and chicken. Just yummy. Brand your own bowl of noodles with zucchini, chicken, and collard greens.

Can You Leave Cooked Collard Greens Out Overnight?

Picture of collard greens
Depending on the weather condition

Depending heavily on the weather weather for your area, you tin leave cooked collard greens out overnight. The greens must exist freshly cooked, in a covered container, and not accept come up into contact with the sun. Otherwise, you should not swallow whatever collard greens that take been cooked and left at room temperature for over 2 hours.

Understanding why eating something that has been left at room temperature is important, and it all comes down to bacteria. If something has been cooked or boiled, so most bacteria have been destroyed. Even so, if it is left at room temperature with the sun shining on it, then any type of food tin activate the natural bacteria in the food and assistance it grow to dangerous levels, potentially causing nutrient poisoning.

All the same, you should go out collard greens that have been cooked for a few minutes in water ice water to cool down earlier freezing. Rapid heating and cooling seals the taste just also prevents leaner from forming. Be sure that the collard greens yous are eating have not been allowed to be the perfect convenance basis for unwanted bug.

How Long Can Y'all Keep Collard Greens In The Freezer?

Picture of collard greens with a calendar
10 to 12 months

Collard greens, either cooked or raw , can be kept in the freezer for 10 to 12 months.

That is not to say that they couldn't be stored for longer if needed, but later on the 12 months marking, the gustatory modality of your collard greens will be compromised with every month that passes.

Determination

Collard greens are highly nutritious, healthy greens that can make up a large office of any diet. Becoming popular around the world in well-nigh dishes, collard greens can safely be kept in your refrigerator for almost a year and will be a welcome addition to your daily meals.

If you were wondering, frozen collard greens that are still frozen can exist eaten as well. Just be certain that they were properly seasoned before being frozen!