Freezing Beets?

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July 30, 20100 found this helpful

Beets: Wash and sort according to size. Leave tap root but trim tops leaving 1-2 inch of stem. Cook in boiling water until tender (small beets 25 to 30 minutes/large beets 45 to 50 minutes). Cool, peel (removing stem and tap root) and cut into slices or cubes. Package, seal and freeze.

kate

August 7, 20110 found this helpful

Try these directions, I used it last year and it worked.

Freezing Beets: Since beets are almost exclusively used in a cooked form, which means that losing the raw texture is less important, they do freeze fairly well. Here's how to freeze beets to store in your freezer at home.

Directions
Step 1 - Selecting the beets: The most important step! Select deep, uniformly-red, tender, young beets. You need beets that are FRESH and crisp. Limp, old beets will make nasty tasting canned beets. Select firm, crisp beets. Remove and discard any soft, diseased, spotted and chewed up beets.
How many beets and where to get them
You can grow your own, pick your own, or buy them at the grocery store. About 7 pounds of 2- to 2½-inch diameter beets makes about 8 pints of beets.

Step 2 - Take a sharp knife and trim off beet tops, leaving an 1/2 to 1 inch of stem and roots to prevent bleeding of color (very important that you leave some stems and the roots).

Step 3 -Wash the beets! Scrub the beets in plain cold or lukewarm water using your hands or a vegetable brush. It's easier to wash them after you've cut off the tops.

Step 4 - Cook the beets: Put similar sized beets (hopefully, they're ALL of a similar size so they take the same time to cook) together with enough boiling water to cover them and cook until tender (usually for small beets 25 to 30 minutes; for medium beets 45 to 50 minutes, in an open pot, or 10 - 15 minutes in a pressure cooker). Drain and discard the liquid.

Step 5 - Cool the beets: You can pour ice over them, or just let them cool on their own. It's just to cool them enough so you can handle them to remove the skins, stems, roots and then slice or quarter them.

Step 6 - Trim, peel and slice: Trim off the roots and stems. The skins should easily slide off. Slice the beets into ¼-inch slices. You can leave the beets whole (if they are small, say 1 inch or less), or quarter them or slice them into ¼-inch slices.

Step 7 - Package, label and freeze: Package in ziploc freezer bags, or better, in a vacuum food saver bag. Label; e.g., "Beets" and the current date. Seal and freeze
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