How to store brassicas and use up cabbage cauliflower broccoli and kale – Food For Kids Podcast episode 78

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome back to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies and this is our regular monthly slot where I run through some of the money-saving tips to make the fresh seasonal fruit and veg we've been buying last longer, go further and store better. The idea is to help you get the best out of your fresh produce so that you spend less, waste less and actually get around to eating what you've bought.

As you might know from previous months, I build my content around seasonal produce. And my main product that I sell is a set of 12 children's books set in a veggie patch. Each book focuses on a different fruit and veg that's in season that month. And because they were chosen to make sure that children explore lots of different plant families during the course of the year, I'm using those same produce from the books to talk through storage and money tips for grownups so that we cover them all during the course of the year too.

This month, the book of the month is Cabbage's New Friend so our foods this time are brassicas like cabbages, kale, cauliflower and broccoli. Whether you've grown some and you need to use them up to make space for new planting, or you're finding they're cheaper in the shops compared to other times of year, this is the episode to make the most of them. Brassicas are a big family of plants that include lots of green leafy veg like cabbages and kales, as well as some bright coloured ones like red cabbages, purple sprouts and red kale, and plants with bright coloured florets that we eat like calabrese broccoli which is the kind we find widely in the supermarket, the green trees, as well as purple sprouting broccoli and cauliflower. It also includes plants like Mustards and some plants that we think of as root veg but the original plant was more leafy.

The Brassica family has lots of edible parts, so for broccoli and cauliflower the florets that we eat are the flower buds. In cabbages and sprouts the little heads that we eat are leaf buds. In kales, it's the leaves that we eat, and some plants like kohlrabi, it's a swollen stem. This means there are lots of different delicious ways to eat them, but how do we go about storing them well until we're ready to eat them?

When you're buying brassicas from the shops, you're usually looking for the vitality of the leaves, that they're not drying out or discolouring and they've not got too loose. So in cabbages and Brussels sprouts, you're looking for plumpness and tightness in the outer leaves. Although don't worry on something like a savoy if there are some sad looking outer leaves as long as the ball head in the middle looks tight and green. For broccoli you're looking for it to be green and not starting to go yellow or limp. If you do end up with brassicas that have gone a bit sad at home, don't worry, you can totally snip off the sad looking bits and still eat them. But if you're buying them then you might as well go for ones that look plump and green.

Once you've got them home, the fridge is the best place for keeping them as long as possible, but if fridge space is at a premium, you can keep them somewhere cool for a couple of days. If the outside leaves go a little thin and pale, you don't have to peel them off while you're storing them, but as soon as they start to look as though they're yellowing or browning or going wet or mouldy, get them off so that doesn't spread.

Cabbage is generally best kept in a bag,or kept in a container. Victorian kitchen gardeners would keep cabbages longer by cutting them with a long stem and putting that stem into a vase of water like an enormous cut flower. But obviously we can't really replicate this in modern fridges. So just keeping the cabbage's own moisture in without letting it get slimy is the next best thing. For Brussels sprouts, if you have bought them on the stalk, keep them on the stalk. But if not, then take off any yellowing or slimy outer leaves and pack them in a bag in the fridge in the same way.

If you've got a big enough fridge, you can actually keep small broccoli heads or stems in water, literally the stem in a glass of water and change it regularly like a bunch of flowers. But for most people, there isn't a deep enough shelf. So the next best thing is to wrap it in a damp cloth or put it in a container with a corner of the lid open to allow a bit of air circulation. Or with a damp paper towel in a bag, but not totally sealed at the top. If you find your broccoli's gone limp, You can put it cold water, for about an hour or so before you use it and you'll find it will perk back up.

Cauliflower is similar. If you can store it loosely wrapped whole, that's the best way. But if you have to chop it up to make it fit in your fridge, then put the florets in a bag with a corner open to let the air circulate. Don't wash a whole cauliflower until you're using it. There are so many gaps in it for water to get trapped in and go off.

Kale and leafy greens are best kept unwashed and dry until you're about to cook with them, so store them in a bag or container with a paper towel or a small tea towel to keep them from going slimy, and only wash or chop kale just before you're going to use it.

If you find that you're not using your brassicas up in time, or if you've harvested a lot in one go or bought a bunch on offer, then you can obviously absolutely freeze brassicas. I'm going to hand over now to our regular monthly chat with the lovely Kate Hall from The Full Freezer about the principles of freezing brassicas.

Joanne (04:55)

Okay, so Kate, our freezer geek! This month, our food of the month is cabbage. So we're doing a lot of activities about brassicas - cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and so on. So if a family is either growing those or they have a bit extra, how would they go about using their freezer to preserve them?

Kate (05:15)

Sure, so with brassicas, I'd really recommend blanching them. Ideally, you want to give them a really good wash before you blanch them, particularly if you've grown them yourself, or if you've got them from a farmer's market and they're still a little bit muddy, you want to soak them for about half an hour in some cold water to just draw out any little ooglies that might be hiding. And then essentially for the blanching, all blanching is, is getting a big pan of boiling water and you want to chop up whatever it is you've got, put it into the pan once it's boiling and you want that to come back up to a rolling boil by about a minute. If you find that it's taking longer than a minute, you might need to take some of the stuff out. You might have a bit too much in the pan.

And then it varies from veg to veg, but you'd generally be only blanching for a minute to two minutes, just depending on the size of pieces and what it is. And then you can scoop those out of your pan, get them straight into ice water, and this stops them from cooking.

So the whole point of the process of blanching isn't to cook the food. It's to deactivate enzymes that cause the food to deteriorate whilst it's in the freezer still. So if you don't blanch it, you will find that the colour won't be as vibrant. It might lose a bit of its crunch. The flavour might not be as good. And what I find particularly as well with things like broccoli or with sprouts your audience might have noticed this when they're cooking broccoli generally, that it can look quite dull when you buy it. And then when you put it in the pan, there's a point that it hits where it is really vibrant. And if you continue to cook it, you end up with green water and it goes back to looking really sad again. And that's basically because there’s sort of a layer of gas between the pigment of the broccoli and the outer layer. And when you boil it, it releases the gas and it allows that pigment to come to the surface. So it looks stunning. I know that's really geeky. That's the freezer geek in me coming out, but it just to me, when you hit that sweet spot blanching it where the colour has just come out beautifully, if you get it out of the pan at that point and get it into your ice water so that it stops cooking, you will help to freeze it at that point where it is really vibrant, really beautiful.

So you want to get it out, get it into the ice water, make sure that it's nice and cold in the ice water and then get it out of that water onto a cloth, get it nicely dried out. You might leave it for sort of 10, 20 minutes as well to let the air dry it. And then just pop it on a lined tray, everything spread out so it's not touching each other because you don't want it to all to clump together. You want to be able to just use little pieces as and when you want. And once it's all frozen through, you can pop it into a freezer bag. And then as I say, when you want to use it, you can just grab a handful of whatever it is just cook it as if it was fresh effectively. So you don't need to defrost it. If you've got some broccoli or something, you can roast that from frozen. You could boil it or steam it.

It is important though with things like broccoli to remember though that you have of course already cooked it for that minute or two. So when you come to cook it at the other end of the process for these particular vegetables, you want to bear that in mind. So you actually, instead of it taking longer, which most people will think when something's frozen, it will potentially actually need less time to cook. So as long as it's piping hot throughout, then it's ready, it’s all good.

Joanne (08:55)

So don't add time on because it's frozen, keep an eye on it because it might need a bit less.

Kate (09:00)

Yeah, yeah, totally. I do have a video, I think for broccoli, certainly on my Can I Freeze It channel. So that gives the outline there. And I would use the same process for cauliflower as well.

Joanne (09:12)

Cool, so I'll link to that video in the show notes.

Joanne Roach (09:18)

So that's freezing. For the listeners who are into dehydrating foods, you can up brassicas, but they have a very limited use case, so think through what you'd actually use them for. Green cabbage leaves and kale are great to add into stews and soups when they've been dehydrated, but you can also make green powder from them. I'll link to a video on that in the show notes. But in the case of broccoli and cauliflower, there's a much more limited use. They can be used in soups and pesto type mixtures where the texture is less important.

OK, so we've stored our brassicas, but now we have to use some up. What can you make to use up extra cabbages or broccoli or kale? Of course, as usual, there's always soup. Brassicas can often be a bit pungent in soup where they're the main ingredient. Many of us unfortunately grew up with family members trying out cabbage soup diets and we can remember the smell. But there are great ways to incorporate them into soups. Broccoli and cauliflower go beautifully in thick soups with a creamy texture. Cauliflower cheese soup and broccoli, cheese and mustard soups are an absolute joy and you can add in some potato for thickening and if you want some white beans as well to make it a complete meal with some crusty bread. These are relatively child-friendly soups because of the creamy cheesiness.

Cabbage works better when added to chunky soups in shreds like a minestrone or a stew type soup, but a lot of younger children don't like chunky soups. So in a lot of houses, you could make the textured soup for the grownups and then blend it smooth for the little ones. That said, our kids would eat a little minestrone even when they were quite young, if the pasta pieces in it were a decent size so like a penne or a macaroni sort of size so that they could scoop those out with some pieces of veg that they liked and lots of bread and over time they got more used to the whole thing.

In episode 42 I talked about things that you can add to foods to up the fruit and veg content and one of the things I mentioned was that very small minced cauliflower can be added to mince foods like bolognese or taco meat because the texture works well and it doesn't have a strong flavour. So if you've got a little bit to use up consider chopping it fine or blasting it in a processor and adding it into a chunky sauce.

If you have a lot of cauliflower or broccoli to use up, there is the obvious classic of cauliflower and broccoli cheese, either on the side of a roast dinner or with nuggets and chips, or in our house, we like it over a jacket potato. And if your kids love this combo, but you don't have a huge quantity, then adding cauliflower or broccoli to a mac and cheese has the same effect, but in a complete one pot meal.

If you have a whole cauliflower and want to do something unusual and interesting, there are great recipes for Indian spiced whole roast cauliflower, where you rub spice paste into the outside of the cauliflower and bake it covered up for a long time. It has an amazing flavour. And if your kids like to try some spicy or unusual things, they might find it interesting and fun as a table centrepiece.

Broccoli has a very strong flavour and texture so it can stand up to roasting or stir frying really well. If your child isn't mad keen on steamed or boiled broccoli then try it roasted. Some children love the charry bits on a soft roasted floret. Or it can be stir fried in all kinds of Asian meals, the most famous combo being beef and broccoli or tofu and broccoli with either a dark salty sauce like black bean or hoisin or in a peanutty sauce. Kids who like beefy flavours can often like the dark-sauced version and kids who like peanut butter will often like the peanutty one. It also goes really nicely with chicken or a veggie alternative in a quite simple stir-fry over noodles or pasta. We found that even when our kids were little they would like this meal if we put some grated cheese on top of theirs so that they could eat the noodles, the chicken, the broccoli and the cheese and let the stronger flavored sauce fall away a little.

Broccoli also goes nicely with salmon because the strong flavour and slight bitterness it has can offset the lovely fishy fattiness of the salmon. I'll link to some ideas in the show notes for some of these combos.

Cabbage is a great side dish in its own right, thick crinkly winter cabbages are great, just steamed or boiled and added to mashed potato as colcannon or bubble and squeak or shredded into soups and stews. Thinner-leaved spring cabbage can be shredded into stir-fries or in with noodles, and thick white and red cabbage perfect for homemade coleslaw. Whether your kids like the creamy mayo kind, which we always mixed half and half natural yoghurt and mayo to make it light, but still have that creaminess. Or the more Asian dressing type slaws that they might have come across with a burger in pubs. I'll link to a couple of examples. Red and white cabbages keep for many weeks in the fridge, so you can just make a little bit of slaw and then keep the rest of the cabbage for another time. Just cut the slightly browned edges off next time you use it. The rest is perfectly good underneath.

A really nice way to eat cabbages is to cut into quarters or six big wedges, which you can pan fry to get some colour on them and then add a sauce around the outside, either a tomato-y one or a spicy one. This is a nice way to present cabbage as the star of the meal and keeps a lot of the texture.

Another good way to expose children to cabbage is in a pancake or waffles. Shredded it can add some nice crunchy texture and you can mix it with lots of things. I previously told you about a Japanese recipe that uses cabbage in pancakes and I'll link to that one again because you really can make it fit everyone's different tastes.

And the easiest way we found to get our children to actually like rather than just tolerate cabbage was with pasta, bacon and cheese. The squeakiness of stir-fried cabbage works so well alongside salty bacon and cheese, or it works well with tofu or tempeh too. And then that soft pasta, I'll link to an example.

Kale will be useful in most of the recipes I mentioned for crinkly cabbage above. It's especially nice in soup and risotto because it keeps its shape. But if you have kale to use up, then don't underestimate the very overly trendy but actually really delicious kale chips or kale crisps, which is nothing like a potato crisp in any way, but it's nevertheless delicious and crunchy and something that kids will have a nibble at just because of that crunchiness. It's one of those things that just because it was a bit of a trendy cliche doesn't mean it wasn't good. You can add any toppings you like and I'll link to some examples.

So that's my roundup on storing and using up brassicas, I'll pop some links to Kate's videos on freezing all of these in the show notes along with quite a few recipes for the suggestions. I'll be back on Thursday with another episode, so I hope to see you then. And in the meantime, happy eating!