Can I salvage frozen cabbage and frozen onions?

[Our7Wonders]

We let a local congregation use our large refrigerated delivery truck for a youth group camp - they keep all their food in it during the camp instead of in a gazillion ice chests. In return they give us all the leftover food - I really think we come out on the better end of the bargain - it truely is a blessing for us!

Anyhoo.... The truck keeps things very cold, too cold, really for tender produce. Most everything is in a perfectly almost frozen state so I can put much of it right into the freezer - but there was a whole 20# bag of onions and several heads of cabbage that are slightly frozen. Not solid throughout, but frozen enough that I know they'll turn mushy when thawed. Can I use the cabbage to make saurkraut? Since the fermenting process would be breaking down the cabbage anyway I thought it might be ok, but thought I should check first. How about the onions? I cut one up tonight and used it for tacos - they were somewhat translucent and no longer firm, but still tasted fine. Can I cook them up and then freeze them for use in soups/stews? Or perhaps some other way to save them? At this point it's all still on the truck with the reefer keeping it at the same temperature until I figure out what to do with it - sure hope I can save it somehow.

 

[sunsaver]

Freezing ruptures the cell walls of the plant making it mushy and more prone to bacterial infection. The onions could be chopped and dehydrated or re-frozen for use in cooking. Not sure about the cabbage fermenting. I think BB and WifeZ are the experts on that. You could cook it, maybe can it.

 

[Marianne]

I have onions in my freezer right now. I freeze them whole, and then chop them up for cooking as needed. They'll slice easily enough after a minute on the counter as they don't freeze hard like rocks.

 

[freemotion]

Yup, I agree. You can freeze onions diced for use in recipes where the texture of onions isn't noticed, like soups, sauces, chili, etc.

Can you peel off the frozen cabbage leaves and use the not-frozen centers? You could also use the frozen parts...keep them frozen, maybe shred them first, quickly....and use that in...um....hmmm.....hide it in other recipes like soups.

Cabbage doesn't really break down in classic sauerkraut, it stays crunchy.

 

[Wifezilla]

I would use the frozen cabbage for soups. It would get all mushy and gross in a kraut recipe. Like free said, it should be crunchy.

 

[Wannabefree]

I agree with the soups for the cabbage. I use frozen onions ALL the time for cooking.

 

[Britesea]

Something I've found when using frozen onions-- they lose some flavor-- so I usually add a bit more than the recipe calls for.

 

[~gd]

I grew up in the north cabbage would often freeze in the fields or in storage. When we took is out of storage (all winter long) we would trim off the damaged leaves and pack the sound heads in crates to ship elsewhere [mostly NYC and the South (where they love their cole slaw)] In the south it was marketed as 'white cabbage' since the outer green leaves had been removed at trimming.

Living now in the South I can say that it is bought up before the 'green cabbage' brough in from Central America brcause of its better flavor. So if you have a cool-cold place to store it, trim the worse of the freeze damange off before storage and expect to have to give it a light trim before use.

If you don't have a cool-cold place trim it now and use like regular cabbage. Do NOT use in 'kraut without trimming. You can do the same with Red cabbage, but not the crinkled leaf SAVOY cabbage

Rotting cabbage has a very high stink because of the Sulfer compounds.

 

[Our7Wonders]

I wanted to thank everyone for the advice. We froze the onions whole and on the cabbage we peeled the outer layers, quartered them up and froze them in freezer bags to use for soup when the weather turns colder. There were about 20 semi frozen limes as well and we juiced those for freezing in ice cube trays and then freezer bags. Loads of other food was rebagged/packaged and put away in the freezer. Feels so good when the feezer is full! What a blessing!

 

[Britesea]

My MIL used to call that her "squirrely feeling"