Methods of harvesting pepper for the winter: recipes

Since February, the pepper marathon begins: soak the seeds, plant the seedlings and nurture them like a small child, plant them in the ground, protect them from the cold, find a suitable neighborhood, pritenit, water, fertilize, banish mischief and such. And now, finally, the harvest, but what a plentiful! How now with this wealth to dispose of everything useful that is contained in pepper, enough for all and for a long time? Or maybe at the end of the summer you purchased a bag of this juicy and tasty vegetable just for the purpose of preparing for the winter and now you repent of your household, puzzled how to process it.

The options for weight, preparations of pepper for the winter are very popular, and the technology for their preparation is varied and easy to perform at home.

Harvesting pepper for the winter: how to freeze a vegetable

Fresh vegetable is stored in suitable conditions until late autumn, but its reserves are soon exhausted, and it is very nice to eat pepper in the winter season. A great way to prepare it is to freeze. Properly frozen peppers do not lose their vitamins and can be stored until the next season without changing the taste and useful composition.

Products are frozen for the purpose of their long-term storage without significant loss of useful substances. People have long used this method, especially living in those places where winter is long and cold. However, information about the long-term storage of products using ice came from ancient Rome. In Russia, products were stored in special cellars-glaciers, which supplied ice and snow at the end of winter.

Peppers can be consumed in a thawed state, but it should be borne in mind that the water that forms part of its cells, after becoming ice and subsequent defrosting, changes the structure of the vegetable, and it ceases to be crisp and elastic.During heat treatment, this feature does not matter.

Peppers are frozen for stuffing, added to vegetable soups and stews, for cooking scrambled eggs with vegetables, eggplant caviar and other dishes that thanks to the freeze it became possible to cook all year round.

For freezing select ripe fresh fruit, not crumpled, with no signs of damage or rot. The less time passes between removing the pepper from the bush and freezing it, the more vitamins it will save for you. Ideally, if the torn pepper is immediately processed. In any case, it is better to do it as quickly as possible. Selected peppers are washed and dried with a paper or cloth towel. After that, it should be cleaned and cut. It is no longer necessary to wash it, the seeds are shaken out of the middle, and not washed out, in order not to saturate the raw material with unnecessary moisture, which after frost will turn into frost. There are different ways to clean peppers, and they depend on the purpose for which they are harvested.

• If you need to freeze it for stuffing, you should make a knife a cut along the circumference below the “hanger”, remove the seed box, shake out the seeds and remove partitions with your fingers. After that, put the pods one into another in the manner of glasses in the amount you need for a single cooking. If you use a method in which the seed box is pressed inside, and then the tail is removed, it will be impossible to put the fruits into each other, and frozen piecewise hollow fruits will take up much space in the freezer.

• For borscht and soups, stews and other dishes, pepper is frozen with such pieces that you used to use to make them: slices, rings, half rings, quarter rings, cubes, thinner or thicker.It is convenient to clean the pod for subsequent cutting in the following way: cut the whole crude pepper lengthwise into two halves, select the contents with your fingers and, knocking the halves several times, shake out the sticking seeds.

• If you have not yet decided what kind of dishes you will be cooking and how you want to cut the raw materials for them, you can freeze it in halves. They are nested "troughs" into each other, compact in storage, and they are easy to cut, even frozen. True, there is a risk of breaking such slices when slicing, but this is easily avoided if you hold them at room temperature for a couple of minutes. The cleaning method is similar to the above.

Prepared as necessary pepper spread on a tray, suitable in size to be placed in the freezer, and placed for 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator. During this time, unnecessary condensate will evaporate and the raw materials will be ready for freezing. After removing the towel, the tray is placed in the freezer. If your freezer has the function of "intensive freezing", it is advisable to use it: the faster the product freezes, the more vitamins it will remain.

After 2-3 days, the tray is removed and the product is very quickly packaged in batches, releasing or pumping out all the air from the bags. Packages are labeled (content, date, weight, desired use - any information that is useful to you), because it is difficult to determine what it is by the appearance of the frozen product and to remember when it was sent to freeze.

We offer several recipes from frozen sweet peppers for the winter:

• Stuffed Peppers

Quickly put minced meat into frozen peppers, hold them with a glove or towel, in order not to damage the skin of your hands, put them in a saucepan, pour tomato juice or sauce with pasted onions and carrots, tomato paste and water and simmer until ready.

• Preparation for vegetable stew or soup with peppers and tomatoes

Take 1 kilo of pepper, tomato, onion, carrot and 200 g of parsley. Pepper cut into half rings, onions and tomatoes - into cubes, grate carrots on a coarse grater, chop the parsley. Mix mass, decompose in portions in sealed bags and, giving a compact shape, freeze. Use the mixture as a dressing for soup, vegetable stew, meat dishes, adding it at the end of cooking directly frozen. After waiting for defrosting, boil for 3 minutes and turn off the fire.

• Fried eggs with vegetables "Summer"

Pass the onion sliced ​​into half rings into a mixture of sunflower and butter, add a handful of frozen pepper, fry them together until evaporation of moisture and browning vegetables (if there is, you can add frozen tomatoes with which to extinguish the vegetables), salt and pepper to taste, pour the eggs over the mass and fry over low heat until done. Salt, pepper, sprinkle with chopped greens.

Drying

Drying is the removal of a liquid from a mass of a substance in order to store it for a long time.

Dried pepper, or paprika, is convenient in all respects: it preserves vitamins, has an excellent aroma, is compact in storage, will add spice to any dish and enrich its taste and color.

Dried vegetables in the air and with the help of household appliances: electric dryer, electric or gas oven. You can do this in the oven, but this method has now become exotic. The washed and dried fruits are cleaned and rid of the seeds in any convenient way, cut lengthwise into 4 parts and cut into thin transverse strips. Pour the prepared raw material into pallets or pans in which it will be dried.

• Pepper drying in the air. Place the container with raw materials in a shade, where direct sunlight does not fall, and cover it with gauze from flies. From time to time, the mass should be agitated for uniform drying. At night, trays should be brought into the house. In summer, when the air temperature reaches 30 degrees and above, the pepper dries in 3 days, in the autumn warm days it may take a week. The drying time depends to a large extent on the size of the slices.
• Drying peppers in an electric drier. Spread slices into uniform trays in an even layer, set to 50-degree mode, bring to the desired state, let cool when the device is turned off. It takes about 12 to 24 hours.
• Drying peppers in the oven. The sliced ​​raw material is laid out with a layer of no more than 1 centimeter on a baking sheet covered with baking paper. The baking sheet is placed in the included oven, temperature regime - 50 degrees. The door should be ajar to free evaporation of the liquid. If the oven is equipped with a convection mode, they should be used. Mix the mass several times in 2 hours with a spoon or spatula, turn it off after 2 hours and allow to cool with the door open. After complete cooling, stirring the mass, repeat the steps. Process until completely dried. The whole procedure may take 2-3 days.

The finished product in the form of slices or in the form of a powder obtained by grinding in a blender, stored in a sealed jar in a dark place.

An air-dried paprika is preliminarily calcined in an oven heated to 100 degrees, which turns off immediately after placing the pan in it and cools with the product. Dried pepper application

Almost every hot dish with the addition of dried pepper will benefit. In collaboration with other vegetables, it works great, highlighting their taste and bringing original notes.Stews, sauces, meat, fish, first courses will play with shades of taste and be enriched with vitamins and other beneficial substances, and sausages, cheeses and pickles will acquire a unique range of flavors, as well as a beautiful shade.

With paprika perfectly combined:

• basil;
• Bay leaf;
• garlic;
• hot peppers.

It is impossible to subject the dried pepper to heat treatment for a long time so that it does not lose its valuable qualities. Thus, dishes enriched with such a vitamin and flavor supplement, cooked in winter, will remind you of summer and support during the period of beriberi.

Pickling

Marinating is a method of preserving products, where preservative acts as an acid in combination with salt, inhibiting the development of microorganisms. Sugar, vegetable oil, spices, garlic, onions are often added to marinades.

However, the concentration of acid that is acceptable for human consumption is not a long-term obstacle to the development of bacteria, mold and fungi, therefore,if it is not intended to consume the product in the near future, it is subjected to subsequent pasteurization or storage at low temperatures close to zero. Marinated pepper is an excellent snack and salad dressing for the winter. Marinate it as a standalone product and as an ingredient in vegetable platter.

People involved in harvesting, most often use proven family recipes and share experiences on how to pickle Bulgarian pepper and other vegetables for the winter.

Pickled Pepper Recipes:

Marinated Peppers in Tomato

For the marinade will need:

• 2 liters of tomato juice mixed with 1 liter of water;
• 2 tablespoons of salt;
• 3 tablespoons of sugar;
• 2 tablespoons of vinegar;
• 1 cup of sunflower oil.

For this amount of marinade you need 3 kilograms of washed and cleaned thick-walled bell pepper. Pour a portion of the prepared marinade into a deep frying pan or saucepan, bring to a boil, dip several peppers into it, cover and simmer until they are soft and the skin begins to move away from them.

Put the prepared peppers into clean, dry jars, roll up with sterile caps, turn them upside down, wrap and allow to cool. Marinade top up as needed for each subsequent batch of vegetables.

You can store this conservation at room temperature.

Pickled peppers with vegetables

Put the washed and chopped peppers into 3-liter jars, pour boiling water for 15 minutes, pour the water into the pan, boil it and pour it again for 15 minutes.

Add 2 tablespoons of salt, sugar and vinegar and spices to taste: hot, black peas or allspice, coriander, bay leaf and the like. To boil the marinade with spices for the third time, pour the jar with the contents to the top, to leak out of it a little, cover with a sterile lid and roll up. Turn the jar upside down, wrap and leave to cool.

This recipe is good because you can add any other vegetables for a vegetable platter in a jar of peppers:

• cucumbers;
• tomatoes;
• cabbage;
• cauliflower;
• bow;
• garlic;
• carrot.

Another way to cook pickled peppers is through pasteurization. Vegetables arranged in a jar are poured with marinade and pasteurized liter jar for 40 minutes, three-liter jar - 60.

Pickling

One of the methods of preserving products is salting. A large concentration of salt prevents the development of microorganisms that poison the products with their toxins, leading to their deterioration and unsuitability for consumption. Salt leads to the rapid dehydration of the product, the released fermented moisture adds to the salt, an already powerful preservative, also lactic acid, which is formed, albeit in smaller quantities than with sourdough, but in tandem with salt is excellent preservative products.

For the process of salting suitable fruit of any degree of maturity. Usually it needs to be cleaned, although there are recipes that do not involve cleaning. Peppers are salted with herbs, spices, spices, but salt remains in an abundant quantity as an indispensable ingredient.

To avoid mold, sprinkle mustard powder on the surface or “clog up” the liquid with an airtight layer of oil.

Salt pepper, harvested for the winter, before being eaten, is well washed and soaked so that excess salt comes out.

For salting the peppers, prepare the sliced ​​fruits cut into two halves with salt, lay with the peel down into a container, tamp, put the oppression. When the juice stands out, put it in a jar with the juice, if it does not cover the halves, add brine (2 tablespoons of salt per liter of water), press it out of the cut-out plastic lid and jar of water, and hold for 2 weeks in a cool place. Cover with a paper lid, store in the refrigerator or cellar.

How to ferment pepper

Pouring is a method of preservation, in which the juice released with the help of salt as a result of fermentation of lactic acid bacteria with sugar contained in the product releases lactic acid, a preservative product.

Pickled foods do not need soaking. and have a sour taste, while saline ones are too salty to eat and need to be pretreated.

Harvesting pepper for the winter according to the leaven technology is simple, it is easy to find recipes and methods for its preservation. Here, for example, one of them. Put up the pods at room temperature for a couple of days, spreading them on a table or windowsill. Wash and chop the pods before cooking. Putting the fruits prepared in this way, sprinkle them with chopped garlic and dill and cover with cold 5% salt solution. Having sunk the peppers and put a pressure on them, leave for 3-4 days fermentation at room temperature.

Drain the brine and letting it drain, fold the pods tightly into the cans washed with soda, tamping and draining the brine.

Ways to preserve pickled pepper:

• 10-minute sterilization of cans without (!) Brine and hermetic sealing;
• pouring freshly prepared hot brine of the same concentration and seaming;
• pouring freshly prepared cold brine of the same concentration, capping with a plastic cap and storing in a cold place.

Other interesting recipes

There are many recipes blanks with this vegetable, and they all deserve to be given their due, because these family recipes, passing from hand to hand, repeatedly tested and loved. Below are some of them.

Salad with pepper and ministerial rice

1. Boil 1 liter of vegetable oil, fry in it for 10 minutes 1 kilogram of onion, cut into rings.
2. Add to the onion 1 kilogram of grated carrots, simmer for 10 minutes.
3. Attach to the mass of 4 kilograms of tomatoes, cut into 4 parts, simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Add 1 kilo of pepper, cut into slices, simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Put in a mass of 2 cups of dried raw rice, 0.5 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of salt.
6. Simmer everything together until rice is fully cooked; it will take about half an hour.
7. Without turning off the heat, put hot salad in clean, dry jars and roll up.
8. Wrap the cans upside down on the banks with a blanket and cool them down completely.

This salad is exceptionally tasty, nourishing and prepared without the addition of vinegar: preservation occurs due to the acid contained in tomatoes. Salad "Ministerial", cold or heated, can successfully replace the side dish. Pepper salad with vegetables "Lecho"

1. Prepare the marinade from 1.5 l of tomato juice, 1 cup of sunflower oil, 2 tablespoons of salt, 1 cup of sugar and ¾ cup of vinegar, boil.
2. Lower in the gravy alternately and stew for 15 minutes: 1 kilogram of carrots, grated on a coarse grater, 1 kilogram of onions, cut into rings, 5 kilograms of pepper, each pod cut into 6-8 parts.
3. Spread hot salad in clean, dry jars and roll up.
4. Refrigerate upside down and wrapped up.

This salad serves as an excellent vitamin supplement to the winter table, bright taste and color reminding of summer. Sweet pepper is a favorite fruit of many, it is able to diversify and significantly enrich the lean winter diet with nutrients. Take your time and energy at the end of the summer or early autumn, prepare this amazing vegetable in various ways and enjoy its taste for a long time.