This is really a topic I have wondered about, with great interest, for some time now.
What foods can you safely freeze, and what can’t you?
I know you can freeze butter. We’ve always done that in my family. It also is economical, I think. And I suspect you can freeze milk (cf. butter).
I know you can’t freeze eggs. The scrambled ones in TV dinners have a chemical added to them, to make that possible.
I also have considered freezing, or at least refrigerating, canned goods. They just expire too soon, I have noticed.
Anyways, that’s my question. What can you freeze, and what can’t you? Please include examples that are surprising (as I said, I suspect you can milk and cream–but I have never heard of anyone doing that, for some reason).
You can freeze milk, but, unless it’s skim, the texture will change on you. (Heck, it might change in skim milk–I’ve never tried. I just know it does with homogenized milk.)
You can very easily freeze bread, which was probably the biggest surprise to me.
When they are on sale I buy a bunch and freeze them. Our parrot loves them as an occasional treat and I love trying wacky cranberry sauce/salad recipes. I finally got around to making Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish this year. Awesomeness!!!
Homemade rice pilaf freezes really well. As soon as I discovered that, I started making it in large batches and freezing dinner-sized portions in Ziploc bags.
I just discovered that mashed potatoes freeze really well, too. When you heat the frozen potatoes in the microwave, they’ll separate a bit and look watery, but whisking them a little blends it all back together again. So now when I make mashed potatoes, I make a huge batch and do the portion freezing.
Ditto on the bread freezing well. Nowadays, when I bring home a fancy loaf of crusty Italian bread or a baguette, I cut it in half and freeze half of it so that it won’t go stale and get tossed. I always assumed before that frozen bread would thaw out all waxy and icky and taste like refrigerated bread, but it comes out tasting perfectly fresh.
I don’t care for the texture of frozen vegies I’ve bought at the supermarket, like string beans, but maybe home-frozen ones would be a different story. I think I’ll experiment with them and report back here how well they came out. Let’s see, I’d scatter the cooked string beans on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then bag them up, right?
One of the daytime food shows claims bananas can be refrigerated to keep them fresh longer. The peel will turn black but the banana itself remains edible for an extra week over leaving them on the kitchen counter.
Not only bread, but unrisen bread dough. Just thaw it out at room temperature and it will rise.
Strawberries and raspberries will freeze, but it’s a two-step process: freeze them single layer on a baking sheet, then bag them or quickly vacuum seal them. Otherwise you end up with a bag of mush.
Not sure what the OP means by ‘canned goods’. Properly home-canned food will keep for at least a year or two on the shelf. Dill pickles usually require refrigeration, but sweet pickles don’t.
I used to freeze milk many years ago. Thawed out and vigorously shaken to recombine what has settled out seemed to work.
Don’t freeze canned goods. The water in the cans will freeze, swelling and possibly rupturing the can. Never ever trust anything from a can that’s ruptured.
Sour cream will get grainy if you freeze it. I’ll be experimenting with frozen fresh cream that I didn’t have time to use this summer. I suspect it’ll be somewhat grainy. I wouldn’t use it for ice cream or whipped cream but I’m sure it’ll be fine in baked goods.
The leftover rice that comes with my takeout Chinese freezes well, and I use it an all manner of rice dishes that call for cooked rice. They always give me way to much and I thought well why not. It’s great.
I found that while bread freezes OK, when it’s back to room temp, it is very crumbly and while still good, isn’t quite the same.
I’ve never been able to freeze any kind of milk, skim or whole or whatever, without it being a mess when unfrozen. I guess you could still bake with it though.
Any kind of rice dish seems to freeze very well. I often make various rice dishes and freeze them in little containers and microwave them at work for lunch. They are very good.
I found fruit freezes well as long as you are willing to accept when it unfreezes it looks a mess, but it tastes fine. I usually put it in a smoothy or make a sorbet out of it and it’s quite good.
I don’t think I’ve tried lettuce, but I have successfully frozen spinach. When I cook with it I actually prefer frozen whole leaf spinach to fresh because it can cook in with the rest of the food for longer without becoming wilted.
You can’t freeze cucumbers unless you fry or pickle them first. They’ll be soggy if pickled but still taste great.
Sour cream, cottage cheese and yogurt all freeze fine as long as you stir them after thawing. Especially if you are just going to cook with them anyway. Block cheese freezes fine but will be crumbly/separate into curds when you slice it… leaving it out of the fridge to thaw might prevent that but we eat it up too fast to test that theory.
Fresh mushrooms do not freeze well but are fine if sauteed first and then frozen. I prefer to dehydrate them and then blender them into powder.
Fresh cherry/grape sized tomatoes freeze great for cooking with later. No need to blanch or peel as long as you wash them first. Then you can throw them on a cookie sheet, place it in the freezer and when they are frozen toss them into a freezer bag. That keeps them from freezing together and means you can grab 2-20 at a time.
Peppers, onions and hot peppers also freeze great. Diced up into small portions or quart sized ones (just whack the bag until enough of the frozen block of diced veggies breaks off).
Apple sauce can be frozen especially if you squirt a bit of lemon juice in to prevent browning.
We do a lot of freezing and canning from the gardens.
I chop up green onions when they are on sale. I freeze them on a cookie sheet and use a funnel to pour them into an small, empty, plastic soda bottle.
It’s a little bit of work but after I’m done I can pull them out of the freezer and sprinkle them on dishes like homemade pizza and they heat up quickly.
