It's common to keep meat and ice cream and other frozen foods in your freezer, but what else can be successfully frozen? Clever Dude shows us how to freeze peanut butter sandwiches. I don't particularly care for PB&J, but still never realized you could freeze them. And it got me thinking, what other stuff out there can be easily frozen and eaten later?
At our house, you'll often find the following non-traditional things in our freezer:
- A loaf of french bread - the recipe I use makes two loaves, and I always freeze the extra one. It's great for sandwiches (like french dip or meatball or chicken subs) or as a side for most meals.
- Burritos - whenever we have burritos for dinner, we make up extras to keep in the freezer
- Roasted green chiles - we buy a big bag when they are in season, roast them, and keep them in the freezer to use in recipes, put on hamburgers, or on our pizza
- Grated Cheese - I buy a big bag of it at Costco and keep it in the freezer, I find that the cheddar doesn't freeze together, but the mozzarella does (putting the mozzarella into several smaller bags helps to prevent this)
Freezing things is a great way to save time and money, you can stock up when sales are good or keep leftovers for more than a few days.
What's in your freezer?
10 comments:
A boatload of stuff.
We regularly freeze lasagna for nights we're too tired from work/on the verge of unconsciousness. But we've frozen banana bread, cookies, coffee (coffee ice cubes are the best for iced coffee) and applesauce.
The frozen applesauce actually makes for a pretty good summer snack when mother nature is throwing 100% humidity days and 100 degree heat.
Oh, well, you know, EVERYTHING.
I had major dramarama last summer when insects and mice got into all of my staple pantry foods, gnawing through plastic bags and those disposable plastic Gladware containers. I threw out about $200 of food.
I was unemployed at the time, so replacing it all was out of the question. I went to the store and got some beans and rice and immediately stuffed them in the freezer. Where they've lived to this day.
Since my w2rkplace sells airtight glass pantry storage, I've been slowly building up a collection and moving the staples back to the pantry. But right now in the freezer, there's a loaf of sliced sammich bread, about 2 lbs of homemade cauliflower hummus, corn tortillas, roasted sweet potatoes, two chicken carcasses, and homemade personal size pizzas.
I usually soak and boil lentils, pulses , chick peas and beans in double or triple batches. I use one batch fresh and freeze the other two. And I often freeze them in smaller boxes, so that I have to warm only the part I am going to use. Hubby is very much fond of pulses of different kinds. He 's usually surprised, how I'm able to whip up the lentil curry so fast, whereas his mom used to take a long time ;-)
We've taken to freezing grapes. Buy a ton when they're super cheap, wash and separate them, freeze them on a cookie sheet with wax paper, and store them in a ziploc bag. Grape-sicles!
Meat, fruit, coffee.
LOVE frozen blueberries
Thanks everyone for sharing!
Grated ginger! I buy fresh and use my microplane to grate, roll into a tube with plastic wrap and later cut off whatever I need.
We freeze milk when we find it on sale. Lowfat or Skim milk freezes best. It takes a long time to thaw in the refrigerator but it's absolutely worth it when we find it at a significantly low price.
Great post.
We freeze lots of stuff. Sweet corn, sliced carrots, sliced peaches, peach puree, applesause, blueberries, and when we were expecting baby #2 - casseroles. I'm probably leaving another half dozen things out, but thats all that comes to mind. Our deep freeze is well used.
Gotta love a well stocked freezer.
Let's see - fruits and veggies in 8 oz packs (buy the huge Costco bags and break them out so it's just 'grab, nuke and go') Meats of all kinds (the boneless chicken breast that I get are vac packed by the local processing plant and you just cut off how ever many you need - very good for my single person household.
Some casseroles and containers of soup - make a big batch and freeze the leftovers.
The extra bags of rice and pasta from when I found them ridiculously cheap a few months back. (Like MarySue, I fight off the vermin - I love living in a 100 year old house, but that stone basement is NOT mouse proof!!)
Oh, and a bottle of Vodka LOL
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