Food & baking, Hobbies, lifestyle

Hello reader!

We started growing Swiss chard this year, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post. I also decided to try it out in our hydroponic garden, which worked suprisingly well! (I will write more about hydroponic gardening later on).

Now you might wonder, what am I doing with all of this Swiss chard? Eating it all in a salad? No. My plan from the beginning has been to freeze it all, and make soup from it during autumn and winter.

You see, a very common soup in Sweden is spinach soup. It’s very delicious! Made with cream, spinach, garlic, boullion, shallots, and nutmeg. (Let me know if you want a recipe here on the blog).
So, my first plan was to grow spinach, but I was recommended to grow Swiss chard instead. Apparently it’s easier to deal with. And it can be used in the same ways as spinach.

So, that’s what we did! And now when we have been able to harvest a bunch of it, I wanted to save it for autumn and winter. Those are the soup seasons after all. I’m looking forward to making Swiss chard soup. 🙂

But one shouldn’t just harvest and put them straight in the freezer. No, the best practise is to blanch them in salted water first. I’ve removed the stems, chopped the leaves up in small pieces, and then boiled them for about 4 minutes before cooling them down again. (Make sure to squeeze out as much of the water as possible afterwards!)

A great tip is to then put them in an ice cube tray. That way, you have perfect-sized little cubes of chard when it’s time to make soup or other dishes.

Do you have any other ideas for meals with Swiss chard? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time,