2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
Squash is a wonderful and very original fruit, perfect for both delicious summer meals and home canning. In order to enjoy their distinctive taste for as long as possible, it is important to learn how to properly store these cute vegetables. In addition to the fact that they can always be canned or pickled, they can also be dried or frozen. It is not forbidden to store these nutritious vegetables fresh, and it will not be difficult to do this even in a city apartment
How and when to collect?
The time of collection of squash is in direct proportion to how they are planned to be used. The fact is that these amazing vegetables can be eaten even by very young ones, as soon as their diameter barely reaches four to five centimeters. By the way, many people eat such ovaries even raw. And also such mini-squash are incredibly tasty in salted, pickled or canned form.
As for the larger fruits, reaching a diameter of eight to ten centimeters, they are usually stewed, stuffed or prepared from them for other equally tasty and nutritious dishes.
As a rule, squash is harvested two to three times a week. In this case, they must be cut off together with the stalks. If you collect the squash regularly, then they will bear fruit until the fall, almost before the onset of the first frost.
It is important to ensure that the harvested squash is not overripe, since the taste of such fruits deteriorates noticeably: seeds begin to form in them, and the cores become too soft and rather loose. And the nutritional properties of such fruits also suffer.
All the squash remaining on the beds must be removed in time before the first frosts hit. By the way, the tops of healthy crops can be sent to compost.
How to store?
At home, young squash can easily be stored for about a week. True, the storage temperature should not exceed ten degrees. And ripe large vegetables endowed with a dense skin can be folded for long-term storage - they perfectly retain their taste and remain fresh for a long time. Even in ordinary apartment conditions, they often persist until spring!
Squash should be stored in cool and fairly dark places - in a kitchen cabinet, in a closet, or under a bed. There is no need to pack them for later storage. The most important thing is to make sure that nutritious vegetables do not touch each other. And in order to identify spoiled squash, they must be examined from time to time.
We dry the squash
To dry these attractive fruits in the sun, they must be washed, cut into thin slices and placed in trays so that the resulting slices do not overlap. And when the tops of the slices wither a little, they need to be turned over.
However, you can dry the squash in the oven - as a rule, this is done with the door open in an oven heated to fifty degrees. The squash dries completely in about six to eight hours (during this time, the slices must be turned over once).
Freeze the squash
The most suitable for freezing will be relatively small fruits, reaching a diameter of eight to ten centimeters, no more. The squash, washed in cold water, are thoroughly dried, after which they are placed in a polyethylene bag, sealed and sent to the freezer. In this form, the squash can easily be stored for about ten months.
And, of course, squash is very often stored in the form of great homemade preparations: salted, and pickled, and pickled, and even soaked squash are always welcome guests on our tables!
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