FREEZING HELPS PROLONG SUMMER FLAVOR.

Byline: Nancy Byal Special to the Daily News

Stretch the season on the fruits and vegetables of summer by using your freezer. Of course, you'll want your frozen goods to taste as close to fresh as possible. That may mean taking a few extra preparation steps before you bag and freeze.

The following tips will guide you.

Preparing produce for freezing

These preparations help some fruits and vegetables retain their quality during freezing. See if there are any steps you want to take with your garden or farmer's market finds.

Blanching: Briefly steaming or boiling vegetables before freezing helps to preserve flavor, nutrients and color. It also stops the enzymes that cause food to deteriorate. You can use a steamer, a pot of boiling water or a microwave oven to blanch. Most vegetables should be blanched.

Raw-pack: Very few vegetables should be frozen without cooking or blanching, because they tend to lose their firm texture. However, vegetables that will be cooked until tender in soups and casseroles, such as chopped celery and onion, can be frozen raw as a cooking shortcut. Fruits often are frozen raw.

Dry-pack: Freezing without adding sugar or liquid is a common way to freeze most vegetables and some fruits.

Tray freezing: Arranging foods in single layer on a baking sheet or in a shallow pan lets you freeze foods individually. Once frozen, you can dry-pack berries or vegetable pieces into airtight plastic food freezer bags for long-term storage. This allows pieces to be removed as needed, with the unused portion staying in the freezer for later use.

Syrup-pack: Freezing fruits in a sugar-water syrup helps preserve their shape and texture. Soft fruits, such as peaches and cherries, benefit from sugar syrups.

Sugar-pack: Coating fruit with sugar before freezing will help it retain flavor and texture. Berries often are frozen in a sugar-pack.

Honey-pack: Drizzling fruits with honey adds flavor and preserves texture, just as sugar-packs do.

Diet-pack: Freezing fruits in water or a low-calorie liquid, such as fruit juice, will cut the sugar content, but can also form a hard ice coating around the fruit. Before freezing, you'll need to treat the fruit with an anti-browning agent, such as lemon juice.

Freezing tips

For best results, follow these suggestions:

Turn your freezer to its coldest setting a day before adding a large quantity of food. Maintain it at 0 degrees F or below.

For peak efficiency, keep your freezer at least 75 percent full. To stock it to that level, you can add loaves of bread or water-filled milk cartons. Do not overfill. There should still be enough space for air to circulate.

Add no more than 3 pounds of unfrozen food at a time per cubic foot of freezer space.

Make sure food packages are as airtight as possible. Freezer wrap, plastic food freezer bags or airtight storage containers will keep food from drying out.

Allow room for slight expansion when freezing foods with liquids.

Chill blanched vegetables in ice water and drain before freezing.

Freeze food quickly to preserve texture and flavor.

Pack up smaller quantities. They freeze faster than large amounts.

Lay packages flat. Thinner packages freeze faster than bulky ones.

Place packages directly on freezer shelves, not on top of other frozen foods. Leave space around them until they are frozen.

Stack foods after they are frozen.

Label and date all foods. Use within optimal freezer life, not longer than 6 to 12 months for most fruits and vegetables.