Greens are not only a pleasant addition to dishes, but also a storehouse useful substances. Regular “grass” is actually literally packed with vitamins! In addition to vitamins, greens contain fiber, protein, essential and essential amino acids, as well as vital minerals. Therefore, if you haven’t yet developed the habit of generously sprinkling any dish with green stuff, be sure to get yourself one - thereby you will provide your body with invaluable benefits.

Of course, there are people in the world who cannot stand the smell of cilantro, parsley or dill, but the white light does not converge like a wedge on these herbs! Besides them there is great amount most different greens, both traditional, known since ancient times, and exotic, increasingly appearing on our table. These are lettuce, celery, sorrel, green onions, lovage, watercress, spinach, arugula and other types of salads, as well as greens, which are not traditionally considered greens, but are also very healthy: tops of carrots, beets and radishes, young dandelion leaves, nettle, linden and plantain, wood lice (a weed is a weed, but there is a sea of ​​benefits!).

All this variety of herbs is generously presented to us by Nature on spring days. In winter, of course, you can also easily buy a bunch of parsley or green onions, but, alas, most often “greenflies” at this time of year are grown using chemical fertilizers, and they are also fed with preservatives so that they don’t wilt longer, so it’s not known what we we get more benefit or harm... Therefore, spring and early summer are the busiest times for harvesting greens for the winter. Growing greens at the dacha is, of course, the most reliable way, but not everyone has a dacha and time, so it makes sense to meet some granny at the market and buy greens for the winter from her.

There are few ways to prepare greens: drying, freezing and canning - pickling, pickling and sterilization. Each of these methods has its pros and cons. Drying, the most ancient method, allows you to preserve most of the vitamins, but requires a lot of time and good weather. True, progress has managed to reduce dependence on weather to a minimum: the presence of an electric dehydrator (or, in Russian, drying) allows you to dry greens with minimal losses and with the best result. The main thing is not to forget to rearrange the pallets on time. Freezing is the fastest and most profitable way to preserve greens for the winter in terms of preserving nutrients. It has only one drawback - not everyone has a freezer. And you need to prepare a lot of greens, at least one freezer drawer. Canning can be a solution for those who do not have the opportunity to dry or freeze greens for the winter. Canned greens can even be stored under the bed or under the window in the kitchen, however, less vitamins are stored with this method. In general, choose the method that suits you and go collecting greens. And we will consider all the options for harvesting greens for the winter.

Drying

How to cook. All types of greens are suitable for drying, with the possible exception of tender salad. Sort the greens, cut off the rough parts and rinse thoroughly in cold running water. Place on a towel and dry as best as possible. Then chop the prepared greens not too finely, but not too coarsely. The fact is that large fragments take longer to dry, there is a possibility of not drying the greens completely, which can lead to damage to the preparations, and besides, large parts are difficult to chop for further storage. And if you chop it too finely, then when chopping a lot of juice is released, the finished dried herbs will not be fragrant and will lose their benefits.

Place the chopped greens on drying trays or on a tablecloth. If you use a dehydrator, set the temperature to the lowest possible level - no higher than 40°C. At such a gentle temperature, vitamins will remain safe and sound in your preparations. You can create a kind of drying rack by laying out the greens on a baking sheet lined with baking paper or parchment, setting it on the highest level and turning on the oven to low heat. The oven door should be left ajar. At the same time, you need to constantly monitor the process so as not to dry out the greens. If you dry it the old fashioned way, then lay the tablecloth in a shaded place with good ventilation. Properly dried greens, when squeezed, do not crumble into powder or stick together, but break into small fragments.

How to store. Use your hands to crush the finished dried herbs a little, sort them and place them in paper or linen bags. Don’t be lazy and sign each package so you don’t mix anything up later. Store dried herbs in a cool, dry place. Dried greens quickly absorb moisture and can become moldy. Dried herbs can also be stored in jars with tight-fitting lids.

How to use. Dry herbs can be poured into the dish a couple of minutes before they are ready. Be sure to cover the dish with a lid to prevent the flavor from dissipating. But it is not forbidden to sprinkle aromatic seasoning on your plate - this, as they say, is not for everyone. From different types dried herbs You can make up the seasoning to your own taste, most importantly, do not forget to write its composition on the packaging.

Freezing

How to cook. Absolutely all types of greens are suitable for freezing. You can freeze greens dry or wet. Whatever method you choose, the greens must first be prepared: sorted, washed thoroughly, dried and chopped. But in this case, you need to chop it quite well, since frozen greens cannot be cut smaller. Next, proceed in accordance with the chosen freezing method.

For the dry method, place the chopped greens tightly in plastic bags, squeeze out the air and tie them so that the bag can be undone fairly quickly. Place bags of greens in the freezer. After freezing, crush the bags with your hands to remove the greens. crumbled. If the greens freeze in one piece, it will be difficult to remove them quickly. Why is speed so important? The fact is that frozen greens instantly thaw and it is no longer recommended to refreeze them.

For the wet method, prepare clean (boiled or well-filtered) water and ice cube trays. The molds should not be too small. Good in this regard Silicone forms. Chop the sorted and washed greens, place them in molds and fill with water. Place in the freezer and, as soon as the ice hardens, remove it from the molds, wrap each piece in cling film (so as not to create excessive moisture in the freezer) and place them in a plastic bag. Don't rely on your own memory and label the packages - frozen greens are almost impossible to identify. If you decide to cook aromatic mixture, then also write its composition on the packaging. In this way, you will save yourself from annoying surprises when, instead of parsley, there is cilantro in a dish.

How to store. Greens frozen in one way or another must be stored in the freezer. A short-term power outage is not so bad if you do not open the freezer door often during it. Do not allow the greens to defrost under any circumstances - re-freezing the situation will not save the situation.

How to use . Dry-frozen greens should be added to dishes almost at the very end of cooking, like regular fresh greens. Ice cubes with frozen herbs can be placed directly on the plate - at the same time the soup will cool down a little. If you add cubes of herbs to the second dish, then keep it under the lid for a while so that the ice melts.

Canning

Properly canned greens are no less healthy than dried or frozen ones. Greens for the winter can be pickled or fermented, pickled or prepared as a natural dressing using sterilization. Canned greens It is recommended to add it to the dish just before the end of cooking. An open jar of herbs can be stored in the refrigerator for no longer. three days, so it makes sense to preserve greens in small jars, literally for two or three servings.

Ingredients:
1 kg beet tops,
1 tbsp. salt,
1 stack water,
1 des.l. 70% vinegar.

Preparation:
Wash the young beet tops thoroughly and cut into strips. Place in a saucepan, add water, salt and cook from the moment of boiling for 5-10 minutes over low heat under the lid. Pour in the vinegar, stir and place in jars. Sterilize the jars for 2-3 minutes and roll up. Beet tops contains much more useful substances than beets themselves. Place the contents of the jar in a saucepan with borscht just before the end of cooking.

Ingredients:
1 kg parsley,
1 kg dill greens,
500 g parsley root,
250 g of salt (salt should be taken in the amount of 10% of the total weight of the greens),
70% vinegar - according to the number of cans.

Preparation:
Wash the greens, sort, dry and chop. Peel the parsley root and cut into thin rings. Mix with salt and fill clean jars (100 and 200 g) to the very top, compacting well so that the greens release juice. Add 2 tbsp to each 100 gram jar. vinegar, in each 200 gram - 4 tbsp. Put in hot water and sterilize for 5-7 minutes after boiling, roll up. In addition to the above ingredients, you can use cilantro, herbs and celery root and other herbs and roots.

Ingredients for filling:
1 liter of water,
50 g salt,
150 g sugar,
150 ml 10% vinegar.

Preparation:
Dissolve salt and sugar in water, bring to a boil, pour in vinegar and boil again. Cheremsha and garlic arrows wash, cut into 5 cm long pieces and blanch for 5 minutes in boiling water. Cool in ice water, place on a sieve. Fill the jars tightly and pour boiling marinade over them. Leave the jars to sterilize for 2-3 minutes after boiling, and roll them up.

Ingredients for filling:
1 liter of water,
25 g salt,
45 g sugar,
250 ml 8% vinegar.

Preparation:
Boil water with sugar and salt, add vinegar and pour the greens into the jars. The greens need to be packed tightly. Place to sterilize at 100°C for 25 minutes.

Salty greens. Wash the greens (or mixed greens) and chop. Mix with salt in a ratio of 1:4 (that is, for 1 kg of greens, take 250 g of salt). Press into clean jars until juice appears. Leave the jars of greens in a cool place for two days and, after the greens have settled, add more greens to the top. The jars should be filled to the brim. Cover nylon covers and store in a cool place. High salt concentration prevents the development of microorganisms. When adding such greens to food, remember that they are very salty, so there is no need to add salt to the dish.

Dill greens in oil

Ingredients for filling:
300 ml water,
30 g 8% vinegar,
50 g salt,
50 g vegetable oil.

Preparation:
Boil water, boil vinegar and salt and cool. Place the washed and chopped dill in jars. Pour in the marinade, let sit for a while and add oil. Close the jars tightly with screw or nylon lids and place in a cool place.

Greens in oil. Rinse one or more types of greens thoroughly, chop with a meat grinder or blender (or just finely chop) and put in a jar. Fill in vegetable oil, stir, shake the jar so that the oil is evenly distributed throughout the jar. Pour oil over the greens so that it covers them with a layer about a finger thick, close the jar tightly and place in the refrigerator. The oil quickly absorbs flavor and can be used in any dish - just add a little aromatic green oil to the broth or sauce. This preparation can be stored for several months.

Canned greens. Wash any greens, chop finely and place in an enamel bowl. Add salt to taste, a little water and put on fire. Boil, stirring, for 3-5 minutes, immediately pour into sterilized jars and seal.

Happy preparations!

Larisa Shuftaykina

Summer is a great time to gain strength before a long and cold winter, eat for future use vitamin vegetables and fruits and, of course, prepare them for future use. There are many ways to prepare food for the cold season. Not so long ago, the most popular of them were canning and drying, but after the appearance of modern freezers on the market, many housewives are also freezing various summer products. Let's talk about how we prepare green onions for the winter, let's look at how freezing, salting, preservation and pickling are carried out of this product.

Preparing onions for the winter different ways

Freezing green onions

If you want to prepare green onions for the winter, freezing is what you need for this. The first thing you need to do is collect the onion feathers and wash them thoroughly. Next, blot the moisture using a paper towel and leave the raw materials spread out for several hours to dry thoroughly. Then finely chop the onion and pour it inside plastic bottle, wrapping it with a lid, or fold it into portion sachets. Then remove these blanks in freezer.

Onions can be frozen without slicing. In this case, it should also be washed and dry, but it is more convenient to wrap it in cling film or in ordinary plastic bags.

Some housewives prefer to freeze green onions a little differently; they first cut them one or two centimeters in length, then blanch them for five minutes. The resulting raw material should be placed in a colander, cooled and placed in the freezer.

Another way to freeze: fry chopped green onions in a frying pan until tender, then transfer to a plastic container and freeze. This preparation will acquire a special taste and can decorate many dishes.

Pickling green onions

Pickled cucumbers or tomatoes can be found in almost every apartment in winter, but few people pickle greens. But in order to store the collected green onions for the winter, pickling is also an option. However, such raw materials will serve you great source vitamins and other useful components in the cold season. So, pickling green onions requires a minimum of time and effort, so every housewife can do this task.

For one kilogram of green onions, you should prepare about two hundred grams of salt.

First of all, wash the raw material, dry it and cut off the very tips of the feathers. Then chop the green onions into small pieces. Place the resulting raw materials in a sterile container. glass jar layers about one and a half to two centimeters high. Sprinkle each layer with salt. Then cover the containers with lids and put them in the refrigerator for storage. Such raw materials can be successfully stored for six to eight months.

Canning green onions

This preparation will be useful to you if you need already prepared onions, which can be used as a side dish for meat, vegetables, and also used to create first or second courses. Agree that this is also necessary and preserving green onions for the winter will also help you.

For this preparation you need to prepare one kilogram of onion, one liter of water for the marinade, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, a tablespoon of salt, a glass table vinegar, as well as bay leaves (one piece per jar), black peppercorns (a couple of pieces per jar). In addition, if you wish, you can use cloves.

For canning onions, it is best to prepare green onion bulbs with a small piece of feathers - just long enough so that they fit perfectly into the chosen jars. By the way, the containers must first be sterilized, this applies to both cans and lids. The onion should be thoroughly washed and dried a little. Next, place it in jars and fill with boiling water. Cover each jar with a lid. Let the onions sit and warm for about five minutes.

Next, drain the water and boil again. Boil the onion with this liquid and leave again for five minutes. Then dissolve vinegar, sugar and salt in the water drained from the jars. Boil the marinade until the salt and sugar are completely dissolved in it, add peppercorns and bay leaves into the jars. Pour the marinade into jars and immediately seal them. Turn over canned onions, cover with a towel and leave until completely cool.

If desired, you can chop the onion for canning.

Such canned food can be stored for quite a long time, but it is best to use them in the first winter after preparation.

Pickling green onions

To prepare such a preparation, you should prepare one and a half kilograms of green onions, three hundred milliliters of dry white wine, the same amount of water, fifty grams quality honey(liquid only), as well as half a teaspoon of ordinary salt and six sprigs of fresh thyme.

First of all, pour wine with water and honey into a saucepan, then add salt. Mix well and cook for two to three minutes. Well-washed onions along with thyme sprigs should be placed vertically in sterilized jars, adjusting the raw materials to size with a knife.

Pour the boiling marinade over the onion so that there is about a little over a centimeter left to the edge of the jar. Cover the onion with a lid and sterilize in a water bath for ten minutes. Then turn off the heat, but leave the containers in the water for another five minutes.

Pickling is a great way to store green onions for the winter. This preparation for the winter is special interesting taste. You can add it to salads and many ready meals.

Thus, there are a lot of recipes, following which, you can make green onions for the winter.

Ekaterina, www.site

P.S. The text uses some forms characteristic of oral speech.

If you, like me, appreciate green onions for their excellent taste qualities And beneficial features, then you definitely miss it during the cold season. Today I offer you an elegant solution to this problem. Now you will learn how to preserve green onions for the winter in several ways.

Preparation rules

Before freezing green onions for the winter, you need to carry out preliminary manipulations, which involve several steps:

Image	Procedure
	Step 1: Selecting Greens. Harvesting green onions begins with their correct selection. Give preference to bright green feathers without visible damage. If the ends of the plant are dried out, cut them off.
	Step 2: Cleaning. Rinse the plant thoroughly under running water, removing any remaining dust and soil.
	Step 3. Slicing. You can skip this step if you want to leave the greens whole. But I would still recommend chopping the green leaves - this way, it’s much more convenient to store the plant. How large to chop is up to you - it all comes down to personal preference. For example, I cut some of the preparations finely (I use them later for sauces), and some into medium pieces (these can be added to a salad or side dish).

Methods for preparing onions for the winter

Method 1. Simple

If you still don’t know whether you can freeze green onions in the freezer, I’ll answer - of course you can. Moreover, the freezer will help preserve the plant for as long as 12 months.

Regular freezing is the most common type of storing greens. It is simple and does not require additional components:

1. Shred the feathers greens to the required size.
2. Place them in molds for ice or baking. Fill mini-containers no more than a third full.
3. Fill the remaining space with water and place the containers in the freezer.
4. When the cubes are frozen, stack them into separate bags and use as needed.

Place a limited number of frozen cubes in one bag so that you don’t have to defrost large volumes of onions in the future.

Method 2. Salting

1. For 1 kg of greens, prepare about 250 grams of salt.
2. Dry the plant thoroughly. It is very important that drops of water do not fall into the jar with the preparation.
3. Mix the greens with half the prepared salt.
4. Start putting the resulting mass into a jar in layers. a couple of centimeters each new layer sprinkle with remaining salt.

After salting, onions prepared by yourself can be used only after 2–3 weeks. This time is necessary for the greens to marinate well and give juice. In this form, the plant can be stored for up to 7 months.

Method 3. Preparation in oil

1. Wash the greens and dry them thoroughly.
2. Cut the grass and fill it into a clean jar about ¾.
3. Pour oil into container and stir, pour a little more oil on top of the mixture.
4. Close the jar with a nylon lid.

This product can be stored in the refrigerator for at least six months. And the main advantage of this method is that the greens do not lose their nutritional components.

Method 4. Drying

When describing how to store a plant, one cannot fail to mention drying the plant:

1. Wash the greens and chop them.
2. Place the plant on white paper. It is very important to place the plant in a warm place where it will have a chance to dry out. Avoid direct sunlight on the plant - it will destroy nutrients contained in it. If necessary, cover it with a sheet of paper.
3. Wait approximately 5–7 days. The readiness of the greens will be indicated by their fragility. If the onion crumbles easily in your hands, you can pour it into a dry jar and store it at room temperature(in the closet, for example).

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