Freezing Food Made Easy

Freezing Food Made Easy

Freezing Food Made Easy

Which Foods Not To Freeze

Demystifying what not to freeze - The Food Don’ts: Foods such as sauces, home-made custards and soft dairy foods. Freezing can cause the whey to separate from the protein contained in the dairy product, which may produce a grainy, tasteless dish on thawing. Reheating is likely to cause egg and creamy sauces to split.

Milk, cream and hard cheeses alone, do save well in the freezer. Flavoured yoghurts can be frozen but plain may separate.
Whole raw eggs may be frozen when cracked open or separated but not the egg whites alone.
Dishes such as Lasagne and Macaroni Cheese containing dairy products do keep well in the freezer.
Definite No Nos; are fresh salad, veg containing a high water content such as fresh tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, celery and whole potatoes. Freezing triggers the water content to expand in the veg causing frost bite and on defrosting a limp, inedible, water logged specimen.
Fresh fruits not suitable for freezing include whole apples, grapefruit, lemons, tangerines, oranges, grapes and melons.
Sprigs of hardy herbs freeze well for garnishing but not Spring/Summer seasonal herbs. Rind from citrus fruits keep well in the freezer.
Dried beans, pulses and pastas cannot be frozen but once cooked they can be, together with cooked rice.
It can be hard to discern which foods to exclude from the freezer, as annoyingly, many of the above foods do work when used as ingredients in complete dishes.
Freezing can impair flavour and the texture of some dishes, and although for some people this isn’t a problem, others may disagree. Freezing certainly won’t improve the flavour of food. A frozen and then re-heated favourite dish will not taste the same as when it’s freshly cooked!
Do not re-freeze raw food once it has thawed. And thawed cooked food should not be re-frozen.
Meats and complete dishes should not be thawed and re-frozen without cooking first. Raw poultry and pork should only be frozen once, after cooking, the meat can be then re-heated and re-frozen.
The best type of home freezing, if your budget will stretch to it, is dry freezing using vacuum packaging.

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