Are Frozen Vegetables OK To Buy?

Your Mom was right, eating more vegetables is a good thing! But let’s face it…buying fresh vegetables can drain your wallet. It’s hard enough to live on a budget, but then you’re expected to eat healthy too. That’s a tall order.

Over the years I’ve always made the assumption that frozen veggies were vastly inferior to their fresh counterparts. It seemed reasonable that fresh produce was superior to anything that had been processed.

Boy was I wrong!

After doing a bunch of research, I’ve discovered that there is a morsel of truth to the idea fresh produce is better than frozen. But there’s a huge caveat…the produce has to be truly fresh.

How the Food Chain Works

Long ago, our ancestors grew or gathered what they ate. They lived on farms or had large gardens. Making a meal meant going to the garden, picking the veggies, and immediately cooking them. You can’t shorten the food chain much more than that. Field to fork was a few steps and took no time at all. The produce was fresh because they just picked it.

Nowadays most of us aren’t in that situation. At best we’re buying at a local farmer’s market, but more often we’re buying produce at a grocery store. That means the veggies had to be picked, cleaned, packaged, and shipped to market. Once at the store, they have to be repackaged and put on display. Then you’ve got to actually buy the produce and bring it home. And let’s face it, you seldom cook them that night. That’s what refrigerators are for, right? You can store those guys for days until you’re ready to eat them.

The problem is, from the moment that cucumber is ripped from the loving embrace of it’s mother plant…it starts to deteriorate. It’s nutrients begin to leach away. It dehydrates. Essentially, all it’s nutrient power is drained…starting from the moment it’s picked. Here in the US it can take days or weeks for produce to go from field to store. Then it will likely be days until it’s happily sitting on your fork. All the while…it’s food super power is being zapped away.

Give a whole new meaning to fresh produce, doesn’t it?

You’re better off with produce from the farmer’s market, but there’s likely still a lag between when it’s picked and when you’re munching on that carrot.

To account for all that travel and processing time, most pseudo-fresh produce is picked before it’s ripe. A while back I wrote about touring our local grocery distributor and learning how they force-ripen bananas. Those guys are picked weeks before they’re anywhere close to ripe, then forced into maturity in a chemical environment befitting any Sci-Fi horror movie!

In contrast, frozen veggies are processed entirely differently. When they’re picked they’re moved to a processing plant, just like their pseudo-fresh brethren. Then they are blanched to stop their ripening process. Next they’re flash frozen and packaged. From that point on, they stay at the same level or ripeness with all their nutrients intact. Because they stay frozen during the shipping process as well as when they’re at the store, they hold onto those nutrients, just waiting to fortify your body. And when you get them home they go back into the freezer. No nutrient leakage while you’re trying to figure out what to use them to concoct!

Benefits of Frozen Veggies

Are you feeling any better about frozen vegetables? By this point in my research I was feeling kind of stupid…realizing that I’d been putting a lot of time and effort into purchasing fresh produce that was anything but fresh. I was beginning to understand why homegrown tomatoes and corn were so much tastier than those bought at the supermarket. It wasn’t just the taste either…they’re packed with nutrients that had faded away from their grocery store brethren.

Then I got to thinking about the taste of the supermarket produce I’ve prepared versus the frozen varieties. It began to dawn on me that there was a taste difference there too. When I was honest with myself, I realized that the frozen veggies tasted better. Especially when I followed the directions and prepared them properly. Honestly, you can ruin anything by overcooking it…and I’ve been guilty of over-boiling my veggies far too many times to admit! So for a couple of weeks I’ve been careful about my produce prep…both fresh and frozen. And frankly I’m equally happy with the taste of both…but I find myself screwing up the frozen veggies far less often!

Then I looked at how much I was spending on fresh versus frozen produce. Sure, some in-season veggies have great sales. But more often than not we don’t the huge flat of peppers I bought before some of them go bad. So I started to consider both the initial cost plus the waste for produce that spoiled before we consumed it. It finally hit me that frozen veggies were vastly cheaper than fresh. It wasn’t even close. Plus the frozen varieties can keep for months in the freezer, where a few days in my fridge turns most fresh produce into a sick science experiment into alien life forms.

My brain slowly wrapped around the idea that from a nutritional, taste, and financial perspective frozen vegetables were a good idea. OK, not just a good idea…a great idea!

But I didn’t want to let go of my broken perception of fresh is best. Nonnie (my grandmother) told me that too many times. But invariably she was telling me that as we were picking tomatoes and carrots out of her garden! What I’ve been considering fresh since the 1960’s when I was harvesting with her isn’t really fresh in the same sense.

Drawbacks of Frozen Vegetables

After extolling the virtues of frozen vegetables, and convincing you (and myself) that they’re not just ok second-string players, but ought to be the starting line-up on your nutritional team…I have to admit there are some drawbacks. First off, frozen produce can have a different texture than it’s fresh counterpart. Most often this is because I didn’t follow the directions. I’ve become a grand master at cooking mushy carrots. I can turn the crispest carotene-bearing carrot into the mushiest mass of ickiness imaginable. And I can do that trick with both fresh and frozen varieties. Over the past few weeks I’ve worked hard to change my ways and I’m happy to say that following the package instructions on frozen carrots (especially not defrosting them before cooking) has led to some of the crispest carrots I’ve ever had. They’re still not quite crunchy like their store-bought or garden-yielded varieties, but they’re danged close. Yet there is a slight difference in texture. So be aware of that.

You may need to watch how you prepare your frozen veggies too. They’re going to be different than fresh veggies, and sometimes the cooking steps are somewhat non-intuitive. My first advice is to read the package directions. I’ve started to take a quick photo of the directions on various packages of frozen veggies to compare the preparation methods. The directions vary greatly between brands, and honestly some are pretty bad. But after some experimentation I’ve found a best practice for many of the veggies we eat regularly at Hectic Manor. In a future post I’m going to compile those best practices…but I’m still gathering data, so please bear with me.

You’ve also got to watch what you’re buying. Some manufacturers add a lot of sodium or sugar to their produce. There’s got to be a reason for this, but I was astounded that one brand had more than my recommended daily allowance in what I thought of as bare vegetables. It was ridiculous, especially since another brand had no added sodium whatsoever. Oh, and those delicious looking vegetable-sauce combinations are a trap. They’re so easy and look so good. Pop a package in the microwave and you’ve got the rough equivalent of mac ’n’ cheese, but with hidden veggies. We’ve all convinced ourselves that the cheese sauce will fool the kids into eating their veggies. While that might be true, we might as well just feed them a couple tablespoons of salt while we’re at it! Read the labels…you’ll be really disappointed like I was.

I also discovered that veggies that are sold uncut are a better purchase than those that are cut. So those neatly cut broccoli bites aren’t nearly as nutrient-laden as their larger brethren. It appears that the time taken to cut the veggies causes them to leach a lot of nutrients. I’m still not 100% sold on this, but there were enough references to it that I figured I’d mention it.

Bottom Line

So what’s the bottom line? Frozen veggies aren’t the poorer cousins of fresh produce. In fact, in many instances their nutritional value and taste are superior. And the added benefit is that they’re vastly cheaper. Plus you don’t have to worry about what’s in season in the freezer case! So don’t feel guilty for buying and serving frozen veggies. Give your pocketbook a break and your taste buds a chance to enjoy better veggies.

I’m not saying go 100% frozen, but mix up the veggies that you buy. Get some fresh, especially the produce that’s in-season, but don’t hesitate to buy from the freezer aisles. If you’re trying to figure out what’s in-season, check out my post 5 Things I Learned: Buying Produce. That’ll give you a head start on what you should consider buying in the produce section.

No matter whether your a produce cooking pro or an amateur veggie ruiner, give those frozen veggies a try. Follow the directions on the frozen packages and I think you’ll find they’ll really help you make it a great day in the kitchen!