Freezing Greens Time!

I finally bought another Food Saver yesterday.  For years I had one, used it and loved it. Then it died.  After grieving, I  couldn't decide which one to get, they have so many models now! Yesterday, I just went into the store and picked one out!  It was  good  timing because I have all those blueberries and raspberries I picked that I don't want to get freezer burn.  AND I had a ton of kale & basil to freeze. Tomorrow I'll post how I froze the basil, today it's kale!

I  got busy washing the kale and cutting the stems off.  To freeze kale, you want to make sure you blanch it first. This basically kills the enzymes that can cause it to get bitter in the freezer.  To blanch the kale,  boil water, throw some kale in, let it sit for 1-2 minutes, remove the kale, dump it in ice water, let it dry.  The ice water shocks the kale and stops it  from cooking - you don't want to freeze soggy greens!

I found the easiest way to move the kale from the pot of boiling water to the ice water was to stick my colander in the pot and put the kale on top.  Instead of removing the kale with tongs or some other useless kitchen gadget,  I just had to lift the colander out.   Soooo easy!

After it dried I divided it up into bags and used my handy dandy Food Saver to freeze it! All that kale fit nicely into three bags.  I did not measure the kale, I prefer the throw some handfuls into the bag method of measuring. I need to figure out how to get the bags to lay flat after the air is sucked out, these bags are taking up too much room in my freezer! Any tips?