You Can Freeze Anything
Anyone who knows me knows I freeze everything! When the Covid-19 pandemic hit we were able to eat out of our freezer through the entire 12 week stay at home order! Yes we had deliveries of fresh fruit and vegetables, but we also ate delicious homemade lasagna, grilled prime rib, soups and chili, jalapeno poppers, hot crab dip, pies and cake and so much more. All courtesy of our freezer. All homemade and without any effort.
Would I rather eat fresh food? Of course! But sometimes that just isn’t possible. On a Tuesday morning before work I don’t have time to make breakfast burritos or pancakes. It sure is nice to grab one out of the freezer and pop it into the microwave. When I come home late on a Wednesday night, it’s wonderful to take a homemade potpie out of the freezer and put in the oven while I change clothes and go through the mail. It’s a lifesaver to have a stash of bacon wrapped dates in the freezer when unexpected company drops in for a visit.
With all of that said, there are a few specific steps that are necessary to make sure you get a good result from your frozen foods.
Keep your freezer temperature around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. If your ice cream is too soft, your freezer is too warm.
Food should always be frozen as soon as possible. Food will never be any better than the day you freeze it. If the food is questionable when you put it in the freezer, it will be questionable when you defrost it.
There’s nothing better than bakery bread when you first bring it home. However, if you don’t eat it right away, you only have a few days before it’s dried out and stale. But, if you take out what you’re going to eat the first day and immediately freeze the rest, you can have bakery bread whenever you want. No, it’s not as good as the day you brought it home, but still very good, and much, much better than if you left it in the bread box for a week. Plus, it will last much longer. However, remember if you let the bread sit out for a week and then freeze it, it will taste like week old bread at best when you defrost it.
You need to wrap and package your food correctly. This is very important.
Whether you use a container, Ziplock bag, plastic wrap and foil everything must be wrapped tightly, squeezing all of the air out. Air is the enemy of the freezer. If your food is wrapped improperly, it will most likely either get freezer burned or freezer crystals or both. Either way this will lead to a tasteless and soggy product.
I like using Ziplock bags, especially for liquids like pasta sauce or chicken stock, but they work for almost anything. They seal tightly, and you can see the contents easily. They don’t take up much room, and you can store them upright like a file folder. This is perfect especially if you only have limited freezer space. Just make sure to squeeze ALL of the air out of the bag before sealing it.
Be sure to label the contents clearly and date them. I have a friend who use to throw “Unmarked Freezer Food” parties. Everyone would bring a bottle of wine and something from their freezer that was unidentifiable. Then we all would defrost our unidentifiables and bake them. Sometimes it was fun, with delicious finds of tasty casseroles or left over Chinese food, and other times, we had nothing to eat but dried out blackened parsley or things that we didn’t bake because it didn’t even resemble something eatable! This is where the bottle of wine came in.
If you are freezing something that you can lay flat, side by side, like bacon wrapped dates, you can assemble them (uncooked) and put them directly in the ziplock freezer bag.
Freezing foods like pancakes that stack take a little bit of extra work. If you’re making a stack of pancakes for Sunday breakfast, and you have twice as much left over as you ate, they freeze beautifully. Use a cookie sheet or a large freezer-proof platter that will fit flat in your freezer. Cover the bottom with parchment paper. Then lay the pancakes in a single layer on the parchment paper. When they are just frozen (in a few hours) pick up the pancakes, and drop them into a Ziplock bag or a freezer proof container. Then, label and date the bag/container. This way the pancakes don’t stick to each other, and you can take out the exact number you want to eat.
You can use this freezing method with anything you want to use as individual pieces that otherwise would freeze together as a clump.
Freezing whole casseroles either cooked or uncooked, I use the same method for both. If your casserole is in a freezer proof oven pan you can leave it in the pan. Lay a piece of plastic wrap on the entire top of the casserole. Then very tightly wrap the whole pan, making sure the entire pan is sealed, with a few layers of plastic wrap. Then, wrap the whole pan again tightly in foil and label it. If you can, slide the whole wrapped pan into a Ziplock or plastic bag.
If the casserole is already cooked, I like to cut it into single serving pieces or into pieces just large enough to feed us for dinner. Then I very tightly wrap each portion in several layers of plastic wrap, and put them in a large freezer Ziplock which I label and date.
Another option, although I do not recommend this, is when I have needed the whole casserole/lasagna, I have lined an oven proof casserole pan with parchment paper overlapping all sides of the pan and assembled the casserole in the pan. Then I lifted the casserole out of the pan with the parchment paper. Then I would wrap it tightly in several layers of plastic wrap and foil and then put it in a large freezer bag. When it was time to cook or reheat it, I just put it back in the same oven proof pan and cook as directed. I have done this with both cooked and uncooked casseroles, although lifting it out of the pan is pretty tricky. If it’s uncooked sometimes I freeze it slightly just to set it before lifting it out. I don’t recommend doing it this way because many times, lifting it out of the pan is a mess! But when it works, it great.
One last point, you have to be able to find things in your freezer. That is the main reason why I’m not a fan of the chest freezer. Where it is much more energy efficient, things always seem to get lost in the bottom and are stacked on top of each other. I can never find anything. I find myself buying things I already have. If you have the room, an upright freezer is my favorite. You can see everything in it, and you have plenty of room for a tray to do a quick freeze.
If your only freezer is the freezer in your refrigerator, not to worry. If you keep it organized, you will have plenty of room for more than you can eat!
Take-aways:
Make sure your freezer is cold enough.
Freeze as soon as possible. Your food will never be better than the day you freeze it..
Wrap you food correctly and squeeze out all of the air.
Be sure to label and date the container.
