There are three ways to preserve beetroot: pickle it, freeze it or bake it into a cake. We still have some of last year’s cake in the freezer, and Rich isn’t keen on anything pickled, so this year we’re going to freeze the whole of our beetroot harvest.

But you can’t freeze it raw. That would be like slicing up a potato and slipping it into the freezer. No good at all. Instead you need to boil it first, then slice it into pieces and drop them in the freezer.

Beetroot takes a long time to boil, and when you’re doing almost 3kg, as we are, you need a big pan. We’re using the stock pot that we use for making soup. We’ve carefully cleaned all the mud off the beets, topped and tailed them by slicing off the roots and shoots, and put them in to boil. This takes around 90 minutes to two hours depending on how much you’re doing, during which time we kept the water at a rolling boil with the lid on. We made sure we checked on it regularly so it didn’t boil dry.

It’s ready when you can slide a knife into the largest beets without any resistance. At that point, turn off the heat and remove them from the pan using a slotted spoon.

You now need to skin them. If the beetroot is properly cooked, you should be able to just slide them off by hand, but they might want a little assistance from the blade of a sharp knife. Remember that the beetroots will still be very hot at this point so take precautions, such as wearing rubber gloves. Once you have skinned them, they should be glossy and reflective (right).

When you have finished skinning them, slice them into pieces around a centimetre thick, put them into individual portions in plastic bags and dropped them in the freezer.

They should keep as long as regularly frozen vegetables, but you should keep them away from the edge so they don’t get freezer burn. When you want to eat them, bring them out and leave them at room temperature for several hours to defrost.

Related posts:

1. Harvesting the beetroot
2. Beetroot cake
3. How to freeze fruit