Freezing Swiss Chard

This is some of the Swiss Chard from my garden in Celbridge. It has a few slug holes at this stage of the year, but once it is washed well and cooked it is delicious. Most people I mention this vegetable to have not even heard of Chard. I saw it first on a Jamie Oliver programme. He plants a square meter of it and gets enough to feed his family for the whole season. The yield is great alright and its very hardy. 

That said, it is coming to the end of the growing season, so I needed to freeze some to stretch the supply out a little bit. 

First I cut the medium and large sized leaves off with a scissors at the base of the leaf. I did not bother with the stem. They are not as nice to eat as the leaf and I am not sure how well they would freeze. Then I filled the sink with salted cold water and washed the leaves. I did this individually to make sure that there were no garden pests or cocoons anywhere. 

Then I blanched the chard. I got a large pot of water on a rolling boil. I plunged the chard into this and gave it a good stir around. Then I put the lid back on the pot and timed the boil for 2 minutes. Finally I removed all of the chard from this boil and put it into a large bowl of ice water for a few minutes. The drain the chard and put it in freezer boxes. 

I have had bad experience with freezing some other vegetables before (cauliflower is very nasty) and so I did a small test batch earlier this week. We ate that in the borlotti bean minestrone that we had a couple of days ago. It was delicious, so I did the rest and got a good sized freezer box out of it. The chard shrinks a good bit when you process it like this, so that is enough for maybe 10 meals. 

The plants themselves are still in good condition and have plenty of smaller leaves (an inch or two in length). I am going to leave these as they are until we get frost - which will probably kill them fairly quickly. In the meantime I will let them grow and keep eating any that are of sufficient size. That way I can stretch out my frozen chard as long as possible.