What I mean by that is can I freeze a fresh gallon of milk for a month or so then when I thaw it will it still be good for a week or however long milk usually stays good?
My mother does that and she’s still around.
I’m sure it’s fine to freeze milk. But my question is how do you dethaw it? I hate “icy” milk so placing it back into the fridge to gradually warm up won’t work. And you can’t leave it at room temperature for too long (it’s unsanitary). So what do you do? Microwave it? Doesn’t that make the milk taste funny?
ooh its like UK winters years ago when milkmen still existed
they deliver the milk and the milk breaks thru the foil as it freezes and expands , you just leave it out in the open for a bit till it thaws but not too much and put it in the refrigerator again
Apparantly, semi-skimmed (half fat) milk is better for freezing than full fat milk.
I don’t know why or in what way - I only know that when I worked in a supermarket, a woman used to come in once a month for a load of semi-skimmed milk for freezing, and this was the reason she gave me.
For what it’s worth, mother’s milk freezes up fine and IIRC can be stored for at least a month.
We had a freezer in the garage when I was a kid (in addition to the usual one with the fridge, of course). We’d keep milk and bread in it.
Nowadays I just use powdered nonfat milk. That way I don’t have to worry about thawing frozen liquid milk or having it go bad before I drink it.
Now if only I could find a nice bag of powdered eggs…
Another relevant question is: what can you freeze milk in? The expanding frozen milk may shatter glass and split plastic containers, yes? Or doesn’t milk expand that much?
We froze milk in the cardboard cartons they came in.
I do it in a plastic container but when I thaw it I get just cream with a huge ice ball in the middle of it that never seems to thaw. Sure is tasty milk though.
When I was a child, our family was stationed at a US Naval facility in Argentia, Newfoundland.
For some unfathomable reason, the Department of Defense found it preferable to buy milk in Massachusetts and truck it up through New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, ferry it across the ocean, and then truck it across the island instead of simply buying local milk for sale to the families on base.
In the course of this epic journey, the milk would always arrive frozen. The containers never burst, since the cardboard and plastic cartons are flexible to a certain degree. I lived on that milk for 3 years, with no ill effects.
However, when thawed, the milk would always be somewhat de-homogenized. (I always assumed this was because of the freezing, although it might have been from just the long journey it was on.) I developed a habit of shaking the milk carton before pouring it, since I really didn’t want to have just the cream on my cereal in the morning. Ugh.
I still do this to this day, almost 20 years later. My friends and SO are still suprised by my insistence on shaking up the milk.
Yes. We have breast milk stored in the freezer here at work. (In clear plastic bags.)
It’s sometimes very startling to be one of four men in an office of thirty women.
I’ve bought frozen goats milk before. It can be frozen and thawed (and drank) no problem. You could freeze it in good ziplock bags. I know people who make juice and freeze it that way. You can lay it anywhere in the freezer and it will fit the contours of the spot better than a rigid square container. To thaw it faster, you can just put the frozen bag in a pot of water… temperature dependent on how nervous a person you are. Coolish tap water will mean it would stay around the fridge temp, but would thaw much faster than in air. Warm water if you want to drink it right away. Just be sure the bags don’t leak, and freeze it in smaller quantites; say 4 cups rather than the full gallon (do they made ziplocks that big?:D).
I put it in the sink overnight to thaw, and in the morning, it still has enough ice in it so that it’s chilled and “safe”–then put in refrigerator to thaw the rest of the way, and by evening, it’s milk time! I occasionally find that the plastic jugs have a hairline crack from the expansion, so I put a towel under it in the refrigerator, just in case.
So how’s it taste?
Cute…
Luckily, it’s never been THAT startling…
Get yer powdered eggs here! http://waltonfeed.com/self/eggs.html MMMmmmmm! All the goodness of egg in a suspicious powder.
In archeology field school many years ago the camp cook would store the plastic jugs of milk in the freezer. When he wanted to thaw one out for the next day’s breakfast he would just drop it in the 5-gal. Igloo water jug–voila, cold drinking water, and cold milk for our oatmeal in the morning. They never burst, AFAIK.
I always buy milk in bulk and stick it in the freezer until I need it. The plastic bottles don’t crack or burst due to expansion, they just bulge a little. Cartons, on the other hand, tend to burst along the seams in my experience.
As for defrosting, if I don’t need it right away, I just stand the bottle in the sink overnight. By morning, it’s completely thawed, but still very cold. If I need it in a hurry, I just stand the bottle in cold water, which really helps to speed things up.
One thing you may notice is that the milk turns yellow when it’s frozen. I hear this is just due to the fat separating out (even semi-skim does this noticeably), but it always returns to normal once it’s thawed. You might want to give it a little shake before you use it, just to make sure.
Frozen milk tastes no different to fresh milk when thawed, and it seems to keep just as long in the refrigerator. I can never tell any difference between the two.