Everyone knows about the benefits of raspberries since childhood. After all, how many times hot tea with raspberries helped with colds, flu, or after a long stay in the cold.
Useful properties of raspberries
- Malina is rich in sucrose, fructose and pectin. Its berries have vitamins C, B, PP, A, E, D, fiber.
- Raspberry contains salicylic acid.
- It contains potassium, phosphorus, calcium, iodine, strontium, zinc, chromium and a lot of iron.
- Raspberry berries are recommended to be used for anemia and atherosclerosis.
- Raspberry has a diaphoretic, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, antiemetic, analgesic effect.
No wonder they are trying to prepare it for future use in the form of jam, jam, compote.
Raspberries are well exposed and frozen. Then it completely retains all the beneficial substances for a long time. The main thing is to freeze the berries.
How to prepare raspberries for freezing
For freezing, it is best to use freshly harvested berries, as long as they do not give the juice and do not get crushed. Therefore, the berries are harvested in dry weather, but not in the heat. Otherwise, overheated berries will quickly darken and lose their shape.
It is impossible to put the collected raspberries in deep buckets and baskets in which it is remembered. For this purpose it is best to use shallow drawers or trays.
- Collected raspberries need to be sorted, removing leaves and other garbage.
- It is believed that raspberries do not need to be washed. But if earlier the ecology was better, now you shouldn’t put yourself in danger of picking up an intestinal infection due to unwashed berries. Even if raspberries grew in the country. For all the same, it was not under a cap: dusty winds blew it around, and it was unknown what precipitation was washed. Raspberries can not be washed only if jam is made from it, because heat treatment completely kills all germs and bacteria.
Therefore, before freezing raspberries need to be washed. For this, the berries are placed in a colander and washed in small batches under running cold water and preferably under a shower so that a large water pressure does not damage the integrity of the berries. Or a colander with berries dipped several times in a container of cold water.
- Larvae often live inside raspberries and insects crawl. To get rid of them, you need to make a saline solution (take 1 tablespoon of salt for 1 liter of water) and pour raspberries over them. Larvae and other insects will float to the surface. They need to catch and rinse the berries with clean water.
- Then the berries are laid out in one layer on a fabric that absorbs moisture well and dried.
- The dried-up raspberry berries are laid out on a tray so that they do not touch each other, while at the same time removing crumpled or spoiled ones.
- A tray of berries is placed in the freezer for several hours to freeze.
- As soon as the berries freeze, the tray is taken out, and the berries are poured into plastic containers with lids. Since frozen berries are not re-frozen, they are packed in small batches. And again cleaned in the freezer - already for permanent storage. In this state, the berries can be stored until the next harvest.
If the primary freezing procedure is omitted, and the dried berries are immediately put into containers, after freezing, they can turn into a solid lump, which cannot be separated without first thawing. For storage of frozen raspberries sometimes cellophane bags are used. But it is undesirable to use ordinary bags, as they are made from recycled materials and are not designed for prolonged exposure to minus temperature. Some packages emit harmful substances during this storage, which are successfully absorbed by the berry.
Also, the package may break, and then the berries will be in an unpleasant neighborhood with meat products or absorb odors. Therefore, bags can only be used strong and those that are specifically designed for packaging products.
How to freeze raspberries with sugar
Washed and dried berries are stored in small plastic containers. For this, a layer of sugar is poured at the bottom of the container, then a layer of berries is laid out. The berries are covered with sugar. So create 2-3 layers. Container tightly closed and cleaned in the freezer.
How to freeze raspberry puree
- Crumpled and over-ripe berries (but not spoiled), which are not suitable for freezing, are crushed using potato masher.
- Add sugar to the berry puree and mix.
- Raspberry puree is laid out in small plastic containers with lids or in closed jars (not glass). But it must be remembered that during freezing all liquids increase in volume, so the puree does not need to be applied flush with the top, but you need to leave about one-third of the capacity free.
- If there are few plastic containers, you can use them to form briquettes with raspberry puree. To do this, put in a container plastic bag, designed for food, and poured into it mashed potatoes.
- The top of the bag is folded under the container, which is then placed in the freezer.
- After the mash is frozen, the bag is removed from the container and well tied. It turns out a neat briquette with frozen raspberry puree, which is put into another tight bag to prevent leakage and tied. It is very convenient to store such briquettes, and also to take as required.
Rules for defrosting berries
Quick defrost is contraindicated in any products. Therefore, frozen berries are transferred from the freezer to the refrigerator and defrosted naturally.
