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Quick and Easy Corned Beef Hash Recipe

I had some leftover corned beef in the refrigerator that was too much for one person to eat and a bit too little to reheat and serve by itself for dinner. I also had a few potatoes in the pantry that I needed to use and decided to get these two crazy kids together and made corned beef hash for dinner! Cooking with Leftovers Recipe: Corned Beef Hash Recipe Save this recipe to your Pinterest boards for later! Share it with your friends!

How to Freeze Fresh Berries

I dance with delight at the availability, sales, and price of fresh berries during the summer. Now that I am getting the sale 411 on the We Use Coupons forums by grocery store, I find that I am able to buy fresh berries when they go on sale. Before this whole extreme (ly nornmal) couponing and sale watching started I thought buying fresh berries was a luxury - not anymore!

However it sure would be nice to save some of those summer sale berries for later in the year. I wondered if I could freeze fresh berries without them turning into a large brick of ice when frozen or container of smoosh when defrosted.

It turns out, you can!

The lovely folks at Naturipe sent me a very generous sample of raspberries to use for developing recipes. After working and reworking my Very Raspberry Scone recipe several times, I had something I was happy with and made them for Husband’s birthday.

That made Husband very happy.

I wanted to try making raspberry infused vodka with the rest of the Naturipe raspberries. The raspberries waited in the refrigerator until….

SMOOSH!

I accidentally put a glass casserole dish full of leftovers on top of the berry containers in the refrigerator.

OH NO!!

I need whole berries to make infused vodka. If I threw those slightly squished and still ripe berries away, I knew I dead relatives would haunt me for wasting perfectly good food.

Slightly smooshed raspberries are practically raspberry jam. However, I do not have time right now to make raspberry jam. But I do have time to freeze my berries until I have the time later to make jam!


How to Freeze Fresh Raspberries

Most people use a cookie sheet covered with plastic wrap to freeze berries. I use this glass Pyrex baking pan with a snap on lid. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.) I like to use reusables over disposables every chance I get. With the covered dish, I can stack things on top in my tiny top mount freezer. I can't do that when I use plastic wrap.

Most important, for this lazy chef, I'm less likely to run out of plastic wrap when I need it if I rely on dishes that have reusable covers. 






















I put the dish with the berries in the freezer for an hour. Any longer and  the berries can freeze to the bottom of the dish. Guess how I know?

Then I removed the berries and but them in an airtight freezer container for longer freezer storage.

Why didn’t I just dump all of the berries in to the freezer container to begin with? Well I tried that earlier in the summer with a package of strawberries. The strawberries froze together in a large clump inside the freezer container. No big deal, you say? You may think differently after spending a ton of time and effort chipping frozen strawberries out  the container to make a smoothie for your sweet niece.

By freezing the individual berries in a dish or on a cookie sheet first, the berries sit in the container like little frozen fruit ice cubes. That makes it much easier to remove a few berries from the container to use on cereal, in a smoothie, or another recipe that does not call for defrosting the whole container of berries.

What are your fruit saving secrets?


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Comments

Jen said…
Thank you for posting how to freeze berries! I should have thought about that when the berries were in abundance in June/July :) Great idea :)
Wonderful!! Thanks for the great idea!

Hop'n by from 'Creative Bloggers Party & Hop'. I'm following your blog now, wont you please come and follow me back?? ~KM

Krafty Max Originals
Debbie @ OtRD said…
Thanks for sharing! Stopping by from the Happy Hour Project Link-up.
Lindsay said…
This is GREAT info! I will have to do this for sure! Thanks for sharing @ Show & Share! I am so happy you did!
Unknown said…
great tip! i put mine on sheet pans and then completely forget about them until the next time i am in the deep freeze...and sometimes they are ruined by frost. love your idea of putting them in long term storage containers. thank you for sharing this tip with tuesday night supper club