Mirepoix "ready-to-use"

[AnnaRaven]

Anna....don't sautee first, you will lose some of the flavor that you are looking for.

Celery will be just fine....this is mirepoix folks, no one will notice that it was frozen by the time you get to the finished product. She is not looking from crunch here. This is just background flavor....which freezing will not ruin.

The veggies will release more liquid when you use them....just sautee a few minutes longer, trust me it will be just fine.

Thanks Dace!

 

[Dace]

Anna....don't sautee first, you will lose some of the flavor that you are looking for.

Celery will be just fine....this is mirepoix folks, no one will notice that it was frozen by the time you get to the finished product. She is not looking from crunch here. This is just background flavor....which freezing will not ruin.

The veggies will release more liquid when you use them....just sautee a few minutes longer, trust me it will be just fine.

Thanks Dace!

 

[AnnaRaven]

The local Sprouts had a sale on onions ($.49 a pound), and decent prices on carrots (2.99 for 5 pound bag) and celery ($1.29 each for large bunches). It's all been chopped now and setting on freezer trays for a bit. Then I'll package it up. Easier for me to chop up a bunch at once than to do a little bit every day. I've had too often of veggies going bad on me from sitting.

I think this'll be great. I also neede to do some pearl onionss for the stew, so I did up the bag and now I have a bunch of pearl onions for salad in the fridge.

 

[AnnaRaven]

So I chopped and froze up several bags of mirepoix. I've used some of it already and it works great!

Note on freezing: I didn't do any blanching of the veggies. I sliced them all thinly, and then froze them on dehydrator racks or cookie trays in my deep freeze at -10.Freezing them that way allowed the pieces to be separate rather than clumps. Then I bagged them. I use the ziploc vacuum freezer bags with the little manual vacuum thingie.

For using it: I just pull out how much I want from the bag, and dump it into the hot pan. Saute a short time longer than "normal" to boil off the water and it's fine. I always add a little salt when sauteeing my mirepoix to sweat the ingredients anyways.

Just thought I should update in case anyone was wondering.

 

[Wifezilla]

I did something similar when I hit a great sale on sweet onions at Sam's. Took hours to cut up all those onions, but it was so worth it