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Foods you can freeze besides meat and produce:
A freezer can be a highly useful appliance in your kitchen. You probably already use it to store staples such as frozen veggies and ground beef. However, you may have wondered about other items, especially if you're stocking up to shelter at home to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus. Can you freeze milk, for instance? What about eggs and cheese?
As you'll see, there are several dry and refrigerated pantry items you can freeze too.
[...] All foods will last indefinitely in a frozen state. However, the food is only as fresh as the state it was in prior to freezing. Once it defrosts, it must be used as soon as possible. In general, frozen food will keep for three months in a standard home freezer. The FDA has specific recommendations for the shelf life for foods, but if you aren't using your frozen goods within three months, you're probably buying too much.
[...] According to the USDA, you can freeze almost any food. However, some foods don't freeze well; apples and pears will turn mushy when defrosted, cream sauces will separate and raw tomatoes will never be the same (but you can still put them in sauces).
Fortunately, there are many foods that freeze and defrost beautifully. So, go ahead and stock up on these 10 pantry staples you can freeze:
There are caveats and cautions listed with several of these items, so be sure to read the source article for details before proceeding! The items listed are:
- Milk
- Eggs
- Cheese
- Butter
- Bread
- Flour
- Chocolate
- Fresh herbs
- Cooked rice and pasta
- Nuts
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Friday March 27 2020, @03:12PM (1 child)
On Good Eats, Alton Brown showed a way to get better results on freezing fruit and vegetables. Put a sheet pan in the freezer and get it good and cold. Then arrange the washed and cut items on it so they are not touching. Put sheet tray in freezer until everything is solid. Then transfer into a plastic bag. (quickly, so it doesn't melt)
It won't be as good as the flash-freezing that commercial food companies do, but you will get decent results on a lot of things.
Whether or not you need to blanch them depends on the item.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 27 2020, @11:35PM
Cookie sheets work well for freezing fresh raspberries. The berries in the back yard come over a few weeks, too fast to eat all at once. We still have a pint bag left from last summer. I use them in cereal, they do get mushy as soon as they are defrosted, but the flavor is great.