Some farmers’ markets, like the one in Union Square, may continue to set up shop in the winter months, but the pickings are often slim. Plus, sometimes you just don’t want to go anywhere to fill your Crock-Pot on a cold, blustery day.
Luckily, not since 1924 when Brooklyn native Clarence Birdseye introduced us to the goodness of flash freezing — the colder and faster the process, the less damage to the food — have we been so excited about frozen vegetables.
“It’s the next wave,” says chef Rob Newton of Seersucker Restaurant in Carroll Gardens, where he serves an organic heirloom-tomato soup made with frozen tomatoes from Hudson Valley Harvest. “The idea of using a fresh tomato from November to the following summer is just out of the question,” he says.
Paul Alward, Hudson Valley Harvest co-owner and farmer, agrees: “With New York’s climate and growing season, freezing is really the only way to eat local year round. Technology has improved to where it’s a better product now.”
In fact, frozen veggies may even be better than fresh.
“Vegetables picked for commercial-freezing purposes are allowed to fully ripen on the vine before they are cut,” says Miriam Pappo, director of clinical nutrition at Montefiore Medical Center. “That means they have the highest amount of flavor and nutrients.”
“No one is saying it wouldn’t be better to live next door to a farm,” says “Cooking Issues” radio host and chef Dave Arnold, “but the argument is that chain of supply does not exist, so it’s better to freeze a product soon after harvest than buy a so-called fresh product that’s compromised by time and transportation.”
Fresh green beans, for example, lose 45 percent of their nutrients in shipping. Broccoli and cauliflower lose 25 percent, says Pappo.
Of course, a raw salad is unlikely to taste better with defrosted vegetables. But apply heat, says Arnold, and “the cell rupturing you get from freezing you get from cooking anyway.”
You’re not going to find entire menus based on them, but chefs and foodies have long believed that certain vegetables — peas and corn in particular — are as good, if not better, frozen than fresh.
“When you pick those two at their peak, they’re very sweet,” says Wylie Dufresne, chef of experimental spot WD-50. “But very quickly the sugar turns to starch and the vegetable becomes less sweet. Unless you live on a farm, frozen is the best version you can have.”
Dufresne doesn’t serve them, and doesn’t recommend them as an unadorned side dish, but he does say frozen peas and corn can be great in soups and purées.
“Not many people will tell you this, but every professional kitchen uses frozen peas,” says Tasting Table’s executive chef Brendan McHale, who’s worked in NYC restaurant kitchens for nearly a decade. “If you have a green-pea ravioli, I will bet you $40 [the peas] came from Birds Eye, because they’re super-sweet, really bright and delicate.”
Off the record, countless chefs corroborate this statement, but most prefer to keep this practice to themselves.
“People have it ingrained in their mind that fresh is better, but like with pasta it’s not,” says Upper West Sider Michele DiPietro, who develops the culinary program for Whole Foods Markets in the Northeast. “Flash-freezing preserves nutrients and flavor. And economically it’s a great option — they’re already prepped and there’s no waste.”
For home cooks and high-volume facilities — like airlines and cruise ships — chef David Burke says that frozen vegetables save on labor and don’t compromise the product. “If you’re making 80 gallons of soup you can buy frozen onions that are pre-peeled and sliced.”
But compromised texture prevents him, like his peers, from being a true fan.
“That’s the problem with freezing,” says
J. Kenji López-Alt, head of the Serious Eats Food Lab. “The reason texture deteriorates is because ice crystals form, causing color change, mush and flavor loss when thawed.”
Frozen-food companies are doing what they can to reduce ice crystals as much as possible. And it’s working.
Surprised by how green a package of Hudson Valley Harvest green beans looked, Jessica Wilson of Dear Bushwick, a restaurant serving English country food in Brooklyn, gave them a try. “They were beautiful, crisp and blanched to perfection,” she says.
In fact, you can get around the texture issue completely if you really, really freeze a vegetable — and small kernels work best. Chef Dan Barber says soybeans and shelling beans freeze very well, retaining their flavor and texture. At Blue Hill at Stone Barns, they prep them when they’re harvested in the fall, and use them throughout the winter. (Think edamame.)
For Dufresne’s “Busted Carrots” dish, he uses liquid nitrogen to freeze fresh carrots, then smashes them, creating shapes you could not otherwise achieve. And because of the speed and temperature of this freezing (really fast and really cold), cell walls aren’t totally disrupted, so the defrosted vegetable is essentially the same as its original state.
“A lot of Clarence Birdseye’s original patents are still useful today,” says Dufresne. “Used responsibly, freezing is a viable technique, not to dismiss or be ashamed of.”
Go fro!
Four frosty veggies and what to make with them.
SPINACH: Gail Simmons, food expert and judge on Bravo’s “Top Chef,” uses it for spanakopita (spinach pie) and stuffed pasta, lasagna and soups/stews. The key is to add lots of seasoning.
BROCCOLI: Chef Rob Newton of Brooklyn’’s Seersucker says to defrost frozen broccoli, squeeze out excess water, then puree it and turn it into the quickest broccoli-cheddar soup ever.
ARTICHOKES: Chef Brendan McHale of Tasting Table suggests using frozen artichoke hearts to make battered, deep-fried bites served with aioli.
PEARL ONIONS: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats likes to slow-cook pearl onions with butter or duck fat on really low heat for 30-45 minutes.