Mar 1st, 2015

Author: donich_admin

Food Processing

We went to Costco in Glasgow yesterday and bought (amongst other things) loads of nice fresh vegetables, fruit and fish. One of the few gripes we have with living in Lochgoilhead is that because it is well over an hour to the nearest supermarket we find it hard to keep stocked up with fresh food.

The obvious solution for many things is to use frozen, but I really don’t like ‘freezer food’ bought from the supermarket. Even putting to one side entirely the idea of thing like ready made pies and sausages which I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, commercially frozen fish tends to have the texture of cotton wool, and vegetables (with the honourable exception of peas and sweetcorn) tend to be soggy and to over cook easily.

So I’ve taken to buying the fresh stuff from Costco (it is always of beautiful quality from there) in large quantities, preparing it myself and then stashing it away in the chest freezer in the garage. I blanch the vegetables briefly first, and then freeze them immediately in either foil trays (as pictured) or zip lock bags. Salmon I fillet and freeze as potions, same with cod (although it doesn’t need filleted). Again the quality is great and it comes out of the freezer actually tasting of something…