How to Freeze Summer Squash for Frying Purposes

If you're interested, below this post is an article about a garden pest that often attacks your squash plants. But back to the original topic...

When freezing produce, a lot of folks think you just "throw it in a bag" and simply freeze the stuff. While true for some things, like corn on the cob, for example, it doesn't always work out for other items that may be in your garden. I selected summer squash for this post because not everybody uses it for healthy stews and various recipes, as some of us like to bread and fry it!

When you freeze summer squash, whether you blanch it first or not, it will thaw out in a soggy condition. This mushy stuff will usually not be something that will bread and fry very effectively, and you may end up with a scrambled mess, to say the least. However, there is a way to freeze your squash for frying purposes, as I found this out by way of trial & error.

Please note: This method takes a bit of time and space, so you can only prepare so much at one time, in most cases. First, you slice your extra squash into your desired degree of thickness for frying. From there, you bread it (I use yellow corn meal and additional seasonings) as if you were about to fry 'em up. Now, take a couple cookie sheets out (or whatever works) and place every single slice of squash on the pans or however many you can fit on there. Make sure that none of the squash touches each other and quickly put them into your freezer. When they are completely frozen, you can now put them all into freezer bags.

Since each slice froze individually, they will not stick together in the freezer. Plus, they are already breaded for frying purposes. Now, instead of worrying about them being too mushy to fry, you can drop them into some hot oil later on while they are still frozen because you don't have to wait until they thaw out to separate them for the breading process. You see how easy this is? Hey, it works for me! Cheers!

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons - Source = en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_squash

---End of Post "How to Freeze Summer Squash for Frying Purposes"

Semi-related Post: "Garden Pest: Squash Bugs"

Original Post Date: 8-13-2012

It seems that every garden season or at least every other one, I have a new visitor (garden pest) enter my glorious growing areas – no matter how many times I change locations, move the crops, etc.  Although, I always manage to have a decent yield while staying organic without the use of insecticides, pesticides, poisons, chemicals, and so on.

In the past, I have written about other garden pests, such as the Japanese Beetles – that once decided to come into my corn field as a throng of silk-eating freaks, and as the battle raged on, I was still victorious minus several ears of corn; ha!  Last year I got to finally meet the beloved Tomato Hornworms, as those fat, green caterpillars got catapulted from my garden in a ballistic fashion, after realizing that they were eating my tomato plants like a crazed glut!

This year, I decided to grow more squash than usual in case I wanted to freeze some, so guess what?  I got visited by lots of squash bugs!  By the way, I experimented with a different way to grow squash, as I staggered my planting session into two-week intervals and spread them out in different areas in the yard.  This allowed me to not only have an ongoing supply of squash, but it also gave me a good idea of how well the plants did in different areas and conditions, such as more shade versus more sun, soil conditions, etc.  All in all, I found out that squash, at least the ones I planted, do better in areas that get sun during the first and latter parts of the day, and shade during the middle of the day.

Well, I’m getting off subject here, and I was going to briefly talk about these pesky little garden pests known as “squash bugs.”

In my opinion, these bugs can easily be worked around without the use of poisons.  The main thing is to make sure your squash plants get a good start in fertile soil with enough water, as once they grow to a large size, it doesn’t seem to matter if the foliage is being ate by these squash bugs.  It is when they attack early and get on the young squash plants, is when your yield is mostly affected.   Basically, if you have a healthy squash plant that is flourishing, by the time these bugs do enough damage to kill the plant, you would have most likely already picked plenty of squash from the plant.

Anyway, if you know what to look for, you can remove these little devils before very much damage occurs.  First, you need to know what the squash bug eggs look like:

Please note, you must check underneath the big leaves on your squash plants, as well, because they like to hide these egg clusters on the underside in addition to the egg clusters that are in plain sight.  At any rate, it shouldn’t be much of a problem for you to scrape the eggs off so you can discard them.  Without the use of chemical sprays, that’s all there is to it, really.  If you have a massive amount of squash plants and want to keep things organic but are too lazy to check your plants for squash bugs and/or squash bug eggs, well:  You better make sure your plants are thriving from the start and it wouldn’t hurt to use some organic compost, beforehand, to help give ’em the boost they need to combat this particular garden pest.

Below, is a photo of the Squash Bug nymphs, not long after they hatch:

This next image, displays an adult squash bug:

Well, now that you know what may have been eating your squash plants and just how easy they are to locate and remove, you have no reason outside of bad weather and soil conditions, to not have an excellent yield of squash!  My favorite way to prepare yellow summer squash, is of course the least healthy – which is breaded and fried, but it is so yummy!  Which is why the first post on this page is entitled "How to Freeze Summer Squash for Frying Purposes." Ha!

Image Credits: perpendicularity.org/blog/ [Link is no longer active]

—End of Post "Garden Pest - Squash Bugs"