Freezing Veg

For things like chopped bell peppers, celery and onion, would you sautee them for a bit before freezing, or just put them in bags raw and freeze them? I don't have room in my freezer to individually freeze them, so I will have to portion them for soups and things and just throw in the whole clump, I guess, as I realize they will stick together. Thanks for any advice!

i don't cook before freezing onions, etc for soup.  if you first freeze them on a cookie sheet in a single layer, you can load each separate thing into zip locs and just take out what you need each time, like 'individually frozen' stuff.

Thanks. I don't have enough freezer space to individually freeze them, though. I guess I will just separate them into single-use bags. 

blanch them for a few seconds

I just cut them up and stick them in sandwich bags - 1 onion, 1 bag. 

Well, I didn't blanch them (didn't see that suggestion before I put them away, Tykeman!) but I just chopped them up and put separated big portions into different bags, then did the same with the celery. Hopefully they will be fine for soups and curries or whatever.

They should be.  Things like peppers don't do well if frozen and then defrosted to eat raw.  Like tomatoes, they have a high water content and the cell walls explode when the water inside the cell expands during freezing.  So they go soft when defrosted and lose their crispness.  But if you were going to cook them, this would happen anyway. 

Thanks, Elliejean. I am just planning to use them for jambalaya, soups and curries and stuff like that. I read online that they would go mushy, and that's fine since they aren't for salads or anything. We bought a huge bag of peppers at Lidl for £1, and they were going a little soft anyway, so I figured I may as well freeze them to use later.  The celery is mainly for chicken stock, so that should be fine.

They should be.  Things like peppers don't do well if frozen and then defrosted to eat raw.  Like tomatoes, they have a high water content and the cell walls explode when the water inside the cell expands during freezing.  So they go soft when defrosted and lose their crispness.  But if you were going to cook them, this would happen anyway. 

Nice explanation, thanks for that. Always interested to hear the science in cooking for doing things rather than just when they tell you what you should/shoudn't do.