Cooking large quantities and freezing food for the future is a smart strategy to save time preparing meals during the week. Still, if you're not familiar with the best freezing methods, your once-delicious dishes could end up drenched or burned.
This step-by-step guide takes the guesswork out of freezing food so your leftovers fall on your plate as tasty and fresh as they were before freezing.
Choose Freezer Safe Foods
Most foods freeze fantastically, including bread (a loaf or individual slices), many baked goods like muffins, as well as soups, casseroles, stews, meat, and poultry.
However, other foods can spoil. Products with a high water content , such as watermelon, cucumbers, and lettuce, become limp and moist when thawed. In other words, foods containing these fruits and vegetables like salads are best served fresh when full of life.
Be careful to freeze anything creamy, like yogurt or milk , which will separate and curdle once it's thawed.
Cooked pasta (unlike baked pasta dishes like lasagna) doesn't hold up well in the freezer either. After defrosting, the once soft noodles turn into nothing more than a bunch of porridge.
Chill before freezing
After cooking, always chill food before putting it in the fridge or freezer.
But why wait if the leftovers are already heading to the fridge? Placing hot food in a cool area will cause the food around it to heat up and generate heat in the appliance.
That is a problem because bacteria can grow and cause foodborne illness when food is not chilled and stored properly.
For optimal security, avoid the "danger zone", which is a temperature range between 4 and 60ºC that has the greatest growth of bad bacteria.
Store in smaller portions
Unless you plan to cook for a large group, freezing food in smaller portions or individual portions is the way to go. This allows you to just grab the tupper and go and encourages you to defrost just the amount you really need.
Not only does it help you waste less food, but it also makes reheating leftovers much faster.
Freezing in smaller portions is perfect for foods like individual slices of bread and large amounts of oatmeal (use a muffin tin to freeze individual servings, then take them out after they're frozen and put them in a bag for proper storage).
Packaging to preserve
To avoid the dreaded freezer burn and preserve the quality of leftovers, use specific freezer bags or containers, removing as much air as possible before sealing it.
And if you find that food is freezing too often, consider investing in a vacuum sealer.
Also, try storing liquids like puréed soups or smoothies in bags and lay them flat in the freezer in thin layers. This saves space, helps food freeze faster, and makes leftovers easier to defrost later.
Freeze quickly
As soon as the cooked food has cooled, put it in the freezer. And if your fridge has a "quick freeze" shelf, even better.
The faster you freeze food, the less ice crystals will form. In other words, your leftovers will retain better quality.
To speed up the freezing process, spread out your pre-frozen containers like soup bags or fish fillets in a thin layer. The thinner your food is, the faster it will freeze.
Give them a label and a date
There is nothing more frustrating than forgetting how long your food has been in the freezer, not to mention waste, as you may have to throw away leftovers that have been left too long.
To avoid this, always mark foods in the freezer with useful information.
Date and label the leftovers to find out what's actually in that container or bag and the date it was placed in the freezer. Some items, for example, should be used before 3 months (animal protein) while others can last 6 months (vegetables).
How long are the leftovers?
We all know that freezing preserves food, but for how long?
As long as the food is fresh before freezing, it may remain safe indefinitely. Still, you probably don't want to eat meat from the last millennium.
Here are a few storage charts that list optimal freeze times for the best food quality. Therefore, keep in mind that although leftovers may not be as good as they were fresh after the following time intervals, they will still be safe to eat.
