Saving frozen broccoli, zucchini, and snap peas with marination and slow cooking

An epilogue recipe to save frozen vegetables from spoiling, after my refrigerator and freezer stopped working. This one combines veggies with Eastern flavors, and it can even pimp a burger!

Serves: 4 to 8, depending on whether you serve it with sides or as is

Preparation: 10 minutes + a night for marination

Cooking: 90 minutes

The final dish, served in a small bowl — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

If you haven’t read the previous posts of this mini-series (saving frozen spinach and cauliflower with saag gōbhī, saving frozen eggplants with light fermentation and a dip, saving frozen green beans with fermented pickles) here’s a refresher. We have a 21-year old side-by-side fridge freezer at home, which we bought along with other appliances and furniture while acquiring the apartment. I sometimes wrote that I considered the amount of frozen food I had stored as an operational risk. I was half-joking. To mitigate this risk, we had gradually emptied the freezer and the fridge, to eventually turned it off before leaving for a hand of days. When we came back, I deep-cleaned the fridge and the freezer compartments. I returned from the grocery store with 11 kg of frozen veggies to help the freezer return to its set temperature, only to find that the appliance was short-circuiting, and could not be used. The timer to cook all frozen vegetables before they would spoil started.

I had already cooked most of the frozen vegetables, and my beloved one took care of the frozen leek and the frozen peas. I was left with frozen broccoli, zucchinis and snap peas. I was not able to cook and take care of these remaining vegetables, so I thought about a trick to postpone the actual time I would start cooking them: an overnight marinade. Read further for the epilogue of this mini-series.

Disclaimer: in this mini-series, time and quantities are often approximated, because I was time-constrained. The countdown to wasting the food was ticking, and I was investigating how to repair the fridge freezer in parallel. I took no notes and I shot only few pictures. The articles of the series skip the usual “About …” and “Here’s a tip before you go” sections. On the other hand, they feature a new “Preservation” paragraph, specific to the constraints of having neither a fridge nor a freezer.

Ingredients

Veggies, ginger and garlic — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

• 1 kg frozen broccoli

• 1 kg frozen zucchini

• 1 kg frozen snap peas

• 500 g frozen yellow onions

• Shaoxing wine

• Thai rice vinegar

• The juice of one lemon

• Garlic cloves

• Ginger root

• Cumin powder

• Coriander powder

• Whole black cardamoms

• Whole cloves

• Chili pepper flakes

• Sunflower oil

• Salt

Preparation

Much of the work this recipe requires happens during the Preparation, before the Cooking part. Be sure to find a large pot your can seal during the time all ingredients marinate.

1. Peel the garlic cloves, cut them in four

2. Peel the ginger root, chop into matchsticks

3. Put everything into the pot, mix gently so solid ingredients and liquids mingle

4. Close the lid and leave to marinate overnight in a cool place

All ingredients together, ready for marination, right before closing the lid — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Cooking

This is the most straight-forward recipe I’ve ever shared on Guillaume Cooks Vegan so far. There is one, and only one step, thanks to the marination process which has pre-cooked the dish.

1. Keep the lid closed, and cook on low temperature for an hour and half — yes, that’s all!

After cooking, when opening the lid, ingredients have lost their vivid colors — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

You can open the lid, and serve as soon as you complete the Cooking steps. I enjoyed it with white rice and I recommend this combination: the texture of the rice differs from the soft vegetables. My only regret with this dish is that it doesn’t look great. Let’s face it, before marinating the ingredients look colorful and the dish is beautiful; after cooking, all the colors are gone and the dish isn’t that appealing. Fortunately, it tastes way better than it looks!

The cooked dish, served in a small bowl; it’s delicious with all the flavors which have mingled — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

On the day I cooked these vegetables, we also had burgers at home — there was an offer at the grocery store I couldn’t resist. Since I had more than enough of these marinated, slow-cooked veggies for the days to come, I imagined I could turn some of the dish into a sauce. I powered up the blender and I obtained a very unusual, although awesome burger sauce. The camphor-like flavor the black cardamoms bring weights on the “unusual” side of this sauce, while the other ingredients provide a well-rounded supporting background — not to mention the chili pepper boosts it!

Turning the cooked ingredients into an unusual burger sauce — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Yummy!

Preservation

With neither a fridge nor a freezer, I had to find another way to preserve the dish I had cooked. I was becoming comfortable with glass jars thanks to the previous recipes, and I had already much to eat. I decided to repeat the process, and I made many jars. These were the ones I kept the longer; I opened them nearly a month later and they well still tasting great.

Two of the jars I prepared with this recipe — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I cross fingers you never have to fast-cook such amount of vegetables. Even if you never get into the same situation, you may find yourself with an unplanned meal to prepare, with little options — in such case frozen vegetables can surely help. Don’t take my first experiment at preserving with jars as a manual: educate yourself separately, be careful, and consume the content of your jars quickly.

If you’ve tried the recipe, and would like to comment (whether you loved it, or hated it), please do so! I’m welcoming ideas, even if it will take a while before I can resume with my cooking pace. I need to find a new freezer, first! Stay tuned for the next “episode” in this mini-series about saving frozen veggies with express recipes.

Epilogue

This ends the arc about how I dealt with 11 kg of frozen vegetables when the fridge and freezer broke down. These aren’t my best recipes, however they forced me to be creative, with a limited number of ingredients and a limited amount of time — so much to cook in few days!
This unfortunate event was an opportunity to explore how to live without a fridge and without a freezer. This drove me to experiment, as I wrote, with food preservation techniques I was not familiar with. To date, I continue storing food in jars from time to time — with successes and failures depending on what I attempt to preserve.

This event also pushed us to revisit our actuel needs regarding a fridge and a freezer. We have bought a smaller appliance after a long quest to compare miscellaneous models and specs. It may not be interesting to the whole audience, so I refrain from posting one more article on this sole topic (and without a recipe).

I’ll resume in June with the regular monthly publication pace. Stay tuned for my annual hummus recipe!

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