This weekend I headed up with Erin to her grandma’s cottage up near South Haven. It was the blueberry festival, so there were tons more people than normal and ever. We saw the Classic Rock All-Stars Saturday night, and then went blueberry picking Sunday morning. We probably picked around 10 lbs between the four of us, and since it was the end of the season, they gave them to us for free (as opposed to the $0.90/lb they normally charge). Unfortunately, I left my bag at Erin’s apt this morning, so I’m not sure when I’ll get them back. I was hoping to freeze them with dry ice (ala Good Eats), to use them throughout the year.
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Freezing is a great idea—have you tried dry ice before? Where do you get it? Is it all that much better than just using a regular freezer to justify the cost and inconvenience? (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2003-45,GGLD:en&q=freeze+blueberries)
Freezing is a great idea—have you tried dry ice before? Where do you get it? Is it all that much better than just using a regular freezer to justify the cost and inconvenience? (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2003-45,GGLD:en&q=freeze+blueberries)
I personally haven’t used dry ice before, but it does freeze the fruit faster so the ice crystals are smaller. Therefore, the ice crystals don’t destroy as many cells in the fruit and the fruit doesn’t become all mushy when you defrost it. Apparantly this works incredibly well for things like strawberries which are notorious for going to mush after you defrost them.
The cost isn’t that much, when I was looking around here the place I found was 10 lbs for like $5. That’s way more than I would’ve needed for the amount of blueberries I had. I probably could’ve gotten away with using like 2 lbs of dry ice. To do it, you just need a cooler, the dry ice and freezer bags. I don’t think that’s anymore inconvenient that finding freezer space to put a cookie tray in (depending on the type of freezer you have).
You should be able to get it at Baskin Robbins 31 flavors. Unfortunately, none of the ones around me sold it, or the people I talked to didn’t know they sold it. Any ice cream store should carry it though. Also, I’m sure you can find an ice distributor that also does dry ice around you. That’s where I got the quote of 10 lbs for $5, from a distributor near me.
Oh, and I got the dry ice idea from Good Eats. Alton did it with strawberries on his show. Now, I did end up just freezing the blueberries in the freezer normally, and I haven’t experimented with thawing any yet, but I’ll be sure to post about it when I do.
I personally haven’t used dry ice before, but it does freeze the fruit faster so the ice crystals are smaller. Therefore, the ice crystals don’t destroy as many cells in the fruit and the fruit doesn’t become all mushy when you defrost it. Apparantly this works incredibly well for things like strawberries which are notorious for going to mush after you defrost them.
The cost isn’t that much, when I was looking around here the place I found was 10 lbs for like $5. That’s way more than I would’ve needed for the amount of blueberries I had. I probably could’ve gotten away with using like 2 lbs of dry ice. To do it, you just need a cooler, the dry ice and freezer bags. I don’t think that’s anymore inconvenient that finding freezer space to put a cookie tray in (depending on the type of freezer you have).
You should be able to get it at Baskin Robbins 31 flavors. Unfortunately, none of the ones around me sold it, or the people I talked to didn’t know they sold it. Any ice cream store should carry it though. Also, I’m sure you can find an ice distributor that also does dry ice around you. That’s where I got the quote of 10 lbs for $5, from a distributor near me.
Oh, and I got the dry ice idea from Good Eats. Alton did it with strawberries on his show. Now, I did end up just freezing the blueberries in the freezer normally, and I haven’t experimented with thawing any yet, but I’ll be sure to post about it when I do.