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Yes, you can freeze bell peppers and save them for your favorite recipes! It’s easy to freeze peppers from your garden or the store with these tips.
This year, for the first time ever, my garden produced more bell peppers than we could eat. Great problem, right? But it didn’t take long for the family to go on strike and refuse to eat them.
I didn’t want my precious peppers to go to waste, so I decided to freeze them for use in chili, fajitas, soups, and other dishes that I can’t imagine making in the August heat.
Bell peppers are an “easy freeze” vegetable, which means you don’t have to blanch them before freezing. Other veggies that you can easy freeze include corn, green beans, onions, and garlic.
You can freeze any color of bell pepper–green, orange, red, yellow, or purple. (By the way, if you haven’t tried purple peppers you should definitely grow Purple Beauty.)
How to Freeze Bell Peppers
Wash your peppers (DIY vegetable wash, #7 on this list, is the easiest way) and place them upside down on the cutting board. Cut almost all the way through and then crack the sides apart.
This makes it easy to get the core and seeds out, with very little waste. Don’t throw those tops and seeds away! Save them for your compost pile.
Use a spoon to scrape the ribs off the inside. Repeat until all your peppers are prepped.
Cut them up in whatever fashion you’d like. I chose strips since I can use them for fajitas, or chop them up smaller if needed.
Don’t just dump them in a ziplok! If you do that now, they’ll freeze in a giant lump. We’re going to flash freeze them, so lay them all out on a cookie sheet or baking rack (which makes the freezing go faster). They can touch a bit, but don’t pile them up.
Tuck your pepper strips into the freezer. Unlike me, you should measure the rack first to be sure it fits. (Reminder: move the multiple containers of ice cream before taking another picture.)
After an hour or two, they’ll be frozen solid. There are a couple of ways to test this: look for ice crystals on the cut edges, or accidentally drop one and watch it shatter all over your clean floor. I suggest option #1.
Now you can put them in your labeled freezer bag. Before you stash your peppers in the freezer, make sure you’ve pulled all the air out of the bag to prevent freezer burn. Slip a straw in one edge of the bag, and zip it shut right up to the straw.
Suck the air out while your husband takes pictures and makes “I didn’t inhale!” jokes. Try not to laugh and fill the bag back up full of air.
How easy is that? Now you’re ready to stash your peppers in the freezer for your favorite recipes. Won’t it be great to have them when peppers are $3.69 a pound this winter?
How will you use your frozen peppers?
