I have a new upright freezer. How shall I fill it?

Cafe Society
1

I ordered a freezer a month ago, and today it was delivered. I know I want to stock up a bit on frozen meat, because I am expecting shortages this winter. (and also broth, which I make from leftovers) But what else shall I try to freeze?

  • Flour? (AP, bread, pastry, wheat)
  • Dried beans?
  • Dried fruit?
  • Freeze-fried fruit?
  • Frozen fruit (like bags of blueberries from the supermarket)
  • Frozen vegetables?
  • Home-frozen veggies?
  • Meals (stew, cooked beans, or components thereof)

Other stuff?

It’s about 14 cubic feet, with the space cut into a lot of sections.

2

Are you prepping, or do you just want to know some good stuff that freezes well?

You can freeze uncooked scrambled eggs in water bottles. You have to add salt (1/4 teaspoon per egg???) for good texture. Remember not to double salt them when you cook them.
Shredded cheese freezes great.

3

I am prepping, thanks.

But we don’t eat nearly enough scrambled eggs for that to make sense. Also, eggs keep really well without freezing.

4

The big thing, and you may already know this, is to label and date everything very carefully. It may be obvious now what everything is, but it’s very different when it’s all frozen and covered in frost or condensation.

5

I’ve always been a big fan of having a large freezer, courtesy of the fact that I’ve lived most of my adult life in places where I can’t rely on the local shopping options to have all the foods I want to buy. So I have some thoughts based on my experience:

Unless you are prepping for a year or more (or buy bulk-sized packages that you go through extremely slowly), I wouldn’t bother to freeze dried fruit or dried beans. They are already preserved - that’s what the drying process is all about.

Flours and grains, on the other hand, are perfect for the freezer. You can get those 50lb sacks of flour at Costco, divide them in 5 or 10 lb bags, depending on how fast you go through flour, and just grab one when you need it.

Think about how you want to divide up your space, based on how much of different categories you’d like to store. For me, it usually works like so - DOOR: cheese and butter; TOP SHELF: ready-to-eat foods; SECOND SHELF: nuts and seeds; THIRD SHELF: flours and grains; FOURTH SHELF: veggies and fruits; BOTTOM SHELF: meats.

Another thing I like to freeze is Penzey’s Spices. The plastic bags they sell the large amounts in are supposed to be suitable for freezing (not the case with just any plastic bag; the volatile oils from the herbs and spices will seep into the plastic instead of staying flavorful). Usually I keep my spices in the fridge freezer and most everything else in the deep freeze.

I also like to have a few blocks of ice, in the form of plastic containers full of water, in case I need to add ice to a cooler for a picnic. It’s more convenient than running to the store to buy ice or having to use up all your beverage ice.

Finally, keep a list of everything you’ve got, organized by shelf and typed up on your computer. Tape it to your fridge or freezer door, and cross stuff out/pencil in new items as you use up and add items. It’s a great way to keep track of whether you need something – “let’s see, I made that tamarind paste a few weeks ago and froze some of it in 1/4 cup containers, do I have any left?” You’ll know without rummaging if you’ve got an up to date list.

Congrats on the new purchase. I envy you - my freezer “died” a while ago and not only was it not under warranty, the repair company couldn’t get a new compressor immediately and warned me it might take months (plus cost the same as a new freezer). Meanwhile, you basically can’t buy a large freezer on island right now - there was a run on them when the pandemic started and now everyone is sold out.

On the bright side, I put “died” in quotes because the repair guy couldn’t really articulate what was wrong. The freezer was being erratic; it had stopped working 2x but each time when I plugged it in again it worked for a while. He said, “yeah it will work for a while but then stop for good.”

However, after I cleaned it out and made 1000% sure there was nothing blocking the seal (it had been pretty stuffed with food), it has worked fine for about 10 weeks now. So, fingers crossed, I’m using it again without trouble.

Which reminds me: things like a bulk-size bag of frozen blueberries make a HUGE mess when they melt. Just in case of a power outage or other problem, you may want to be sure that anything that will make a juicy/bloody mess if it thaws is extra well contained. If I ever buy blueberries like that again, I’m gonna triple-wrap them just in case.

6

Congrats on it arriving.

Mine came in today and I went and picked it up. It’s only a 3.5 cubic, which is all I need as a single person.

7

been there, done that!

It’s not as bad as the meat, though, because it doesn’t spoil in a way that smells horrible. We had to throw away a fridge because the circuit breaker flipped, we didn’t notice, the meat in the freezer section spoiled, and foul-smelling juices got into places that I couldn’t access. The time my daughter left the freezer door open and everything defrosted (but nothing spoiled, because we noticed it before then) we had an enormous mess from the blueberries, but an hour later the freezer was good to go. An hour of hard work… but still.

This is an oddly shaped freezer. It was made for the UK market, and it’s narrower and taller than the typical US freezer. It also has 8 compartments, mostly shelves, but a few on the bottom are large bins.

I like the idea of keeping a piece of paper on the front that says what’s on each shelf. And yes, I label stuff. Especially plastic tubs of stuff we made. (broth, stew, cooked red lentils for lentil stew, stewed fruit…) It’s really worth knowing whether that tub contains beef broth or beef stew, and approximately how old it is. I date everything with just year and month, as that’s generally enough info.

8

congrats!

Yeah, I’ve been waiting about a month for this. I’m excited it arrived, and relieved that there wasn’t a problem getting it through the narrow basement door, etc.

9

^^^That’s great! I got mine into the apartment okay, and it fit in my Cherokee’s hatchback with no problem. I probably won’t turn it on until Friday as I’ll be doing some shopping Saturday. They have some good sales ending Saturday (like ice cream-- buy one, get one free, ham steaks–but two get three free, and other goodies. Might as well slowly start filling it up :slight_smile:

10

I’d suggest buying a food vacuum sealer, if you can find one. Freezers sold out very fast, and so did sealers. But just shoving food in a freezer in original packaging is not a good idea, as it generally won’t keep for an extended period.

11

Ouch! Yeah, I was lucky in that I discovered that everything had melted while it was still cold even if not frozen. So although I did have a lot of meat juice to clean up, it hadn’t gotten smelly yet.

Reminds me of a friend who went away for a week with a durian fruit in the fridge. You know where this story is going. Yeah, he had to throw that refrigerator out.

12

a hacked up corpse is about 3 cubic feet.

13

I’ve been buying most of my meat from a local “meat share” place recently, and it comes pre-frozen in heavy plastic. And I think the packaging frozen veggies come in holds up reasonably well, too. And I haven’t had a problem with stuff frozen into those Chinese restaurant plastic quart containers, either. I recently ate some stewed fruit that I’d frozen several years ago and forgotten about – it was delicious.

14

Dead hookers.

15

Hmm, how do you cook dead hookers? And where do you source them?

16

Low and slow…and…craigslist?

17

After you’ve got all your meat and veggies in there then fill it up with flour, beans, and anything else to fill in the air space. If you don’t have anything else use bottles or bags of water, leaving expansion space in them. This will extend the life of your freezer and the length of time you can endure a power outage without losing everything. The down side of a full freezer is finding what you need. Maintain a list of what you have in there and try to use it all up in chronological order.

18

If you decide to bake something and freeze it, quick breads and bar cookies stack better than muffins and individual cookies. If you use a vacuum sealer, just be careful with the amount of air you take out.

My husband normally has some sort of quick bread for breakfast, so I have some in the freezer for those times it gets crazy busy. Also helps for variety.