Ok- so last week I thought I was being super smart by freezing various sized portions of chili and rice together in ziplock slider bags. My plan was to just heat the entire bag in boiling water until it was heated, and presto- hot meal, no mess. In my experience, microwaving this kind of stuff from frozen is dodgy- the outside parts get nuked to obliteration while the inner ice core remains. So I figured I would just simmer the bags as needed and eat. The idea seemed exceedingly elegant and clever at the time.
But now I’m wondering if the bags will withstand being boiled. I have also heard that things can leach out of plastic when heated, but that seems like hysteria to me. I’m more concerned about the bag breaking, which would be a catastrophe.
Looking around online I see I can find almost any opinion I want. Anyone have any experience with this? The detail which fills me with doubt is that these are slider bags, not freezer bags. Anyway-
I’m not sure about the bags you can get at the grocery store, but at work we use bags specifically made to do just that. When we make giant batches of chili (or other soups/stews) and immediately put them into these bags, seal them and toss them into ice water and then move them to the freezer. When it’s time to serve them, the entire bag goes into boiling water for about 2 hours and it’s ready to go.
I really don’t think a Ziplock bag could survive that, these are pretty heavy duty and the top and bottom are heat sealed.
Thinking about it again, if you use the heavier freezer bags and the plastic can survive the boiling process, I think you’ll be okay. You might even just want to bring it to a simmer instead of a rolling boil. But here’s the trick. Don’t rely on the zipper, use a ziptie to seal off the top. They hold up just fine in boiling water.
Your ziplock bags are probably not thermoplastic - they will leach plasticizers into your food, and will probably not be strong enough under heat to not break/shrink/leak.
Just remove the food from the bag, place in a microwave dish, cover, and use a lower setting for a longer time on the microwave (and stir halfway through). You have power settings on a microwave for a reason - it allows more time for conduction to evenly heat the food.
ETA, I’m not sure if they other three seams will hold up though. The other thing you can do is to just run the bag under warm water so you can pour it into something to heat it the rest of the way or bring it from the freezer to the fridge a day or two earlier so that it’s thawed ahead of time (put it in a bowl, it’ll condensate).
Is this necessarily a detrimental thing? And I’m not at all being snarky here, I did a cursory look online, but do you have a cite for that?
My family goes on about this issue, but if I’m over skeptical, take into consideration that they are down with Homeopathy, ghosts, all kinds of crazy stuff. My sister is even an anti-vaxer. I guess I’m just explaining why I’m a little skeptical about this claim.
There are brands of soup that are sold like that the kosher brand “Tabatchnick” is one - I’m sure they don’t use simple consumer Ziploc bags, but in principle, the idea should work.
Here are the bags that we use (though I think we order them from a different place). They are heavy duty, FDA approved, designed to be boiled and all that jazz. Perfectly safe for food as far as everyone should be concerned. We use the angle-sealed 10x20 4.5mil bags. Which means they are 1 gallon and heat sealed at the bottom. Some come with a metal clip at the bottom if you’re going to re-heat them on a steam table. We use a heat sealer to seal the top after filling, but like I said, in a pinch, a zip tie works just fine if you really crank down on it. With these bags you can boil the crap out of them and they almost never break as long as you keep an eye on them.
Because plastic bags come in different varieties with different strengths and properties. For your garden-variety freezer bag, I would go with the safe side and assume they can NOT safely be cooked*. Think about it, it’s a special step in production to make them heat-resistant, which means it’s more expensive, which means they will market it extra.
So for this batch, pour them out in a different container for re-heating, and next time, buy special plastic bags that clearly say that they are rated for this.
Even if you don’t believe that plasticiers leak into the food, a bag that’s melting from the heat is not what most people want in their food, either.
The problem I see with your plan is that I don’t think the rice will taste very good after being frozen and reheated although I don’t think the chili will be noticeably worse. I would have frozen the chili by itself and made fresh rice each day.
Errrr…I’m not THAT dumb :D. I was talking about finding varying results while reading about recommended usage for Ziploc bags- though I had a hard time separating the “slider” from the “freezer” results. But I AM aware that plastic comes in many grades, and that this impacts cost.
The plasticizer thing is a minor issue. I think it would be best if indusy switched to plasticizers that don’t have any evidence of problems at all, but I’m not entirely certain such a thing exists. The cost of such a switch may outweigh the benefits. I also don’t know for certain what type of plasticizers are used in ziplock bags. I assume it’s a phthalate, just because it’s so common.
The real issue, I think, is that you will be heating these plastic bags pretty close to their Tg. I don’t think these bags are designed to hold structural integrity at 100C for long.
By the way, if you really want to do this right in the future, get a vacuum sealer. I have a Seal-a-Meal, which I got from Target - and the sealer bags say specifically that they can be used for boil-in-the-bag cooking.
Also, with vacuum sealing your frozen stuff will last a year+ without freezer burn.
Freeze it in whatever you like, transfer to microwavable dish, micro wave for half time, stir, microwave again. A little experimentation should bring you to the knowledge of just how long to zap between stirs and at what setting, etc. Could be a fun experiment.
Seriously, it’s the path of least resistance. Although, thinking of it now, that’s not necessarily more attractive to dopers, now is it?
A lot of people (me included) use Ziploc bags for sous vide cooking. Note though that the water does not reach boiling temperature in sous vide – it is usually around 130F to 182F.
If you have a rice cooker (and if you don’t, I recommend strongly that you get one), here’s your answer: Fill your rice cooker nearly to the top with hot water and turn it on to the “keep warm” setting instead of the “cook” setting. That will keep the water somewhere in the area of 130F to 140F. Put in your baggies full of food and it will heat to a good serving temperature without boiling or overcooking.
I second the vacuum sealer recommendation. We’ve used the FoodSaver brand of machine and bags for years with complete satisfaction. The bags are a Nylon type material made to withstand boiling.
Here is a link on the determination of leaching from plastic bags/cling films using GC and standardised food substitutes. They don’t dispute that plasticizer leaching occurs. While phthalates can no longer be used in food-grade products, I would still be concerned about the other plasticizers used, as well as chemical breakdown of the plastic itself at 100[sup]o[/sup]C. Also note that these determinations are not carried out at food heating temperatures (either sous vide or boil-in-bag). And the manufacturer of ZipLoc recommends against this sort of use. It seems a nobrainer.
Also, heating a larger pot of water to heat up a single serve of food is inefficient, as compared with just heating the food itself.
That’s good to know. I’ve always avoided freezing meals including rice after hearing dire stories of the dangers of reheating cooked rice, so I’d just freeze the chilli on its own and then cook some fresh rice each time I used some.
Freezing it all together would be much quicker, and if it hasn’t killed you yet…
