Freezing fresh food is one of the best ways to preserve its flavour and nutrients whilst creating a longer shelf life. However, freezing food incorrectly can lead to loss of texture, taste, and quality, so knowing the right techniques is important to ensure your meals taste just as delicious when thawed.
Experts at BottomLine Inc. have shared simple tips on how to correctly freeze fresh food. They said: “Can’t eat all the green beans growing in your garden? No time to fry the fish in your fridge? Lunch leftovers languishing? There’s no need to let excess food go to waste, as long as there’s room in your freezer.”
Meat and fish
Meat and fish are commonly frozen due to their short shelf life. The expert has shared the correct way to freeze this food and said: “When possible, freeze meat, fish and poultry raw rather than cooking it first, which may result in an off-putting ‘warmed over’ flavour.
“Keep in mind that refreezing previously frozen and thawed food can harm quality—that is, flavour and texture. Food remains safe as long as it stays solidly frozen, but the quality can suffer over long periods.”
Fresh fish can be eaten within a few months if you wrap it tightly in cling film and then cover it with freezer wrap before freezing. For poultry, “avoid stuffing whole birds and wrap giblets separately”.
“Whole birds” should be used within a year, whilst pieces should be consumed in nine months, and giblets or ground poultry within four months. The expert also advises that red meat should be eaten within 12 months and ground meat within four months.
However, sliced deli meat should be eaten within two to three months. “If the meat is packed in wrapping from the market, leave it in this, but put the package in a tightly sealed freezer bag as well—the plastic wrap used by markets does not keep out air very well, and the meat might become freezer-burned in as little as a month.”
Vegetables
The food experts went on to advise that the secret to keeping vegetables tasty before freezing is to blanch them first.
They said: “Blanching—briefly boiling or steaming—inactivates enzymes in vegetables that otherwise would cause them to become tough, discoloured and/or oddly flavoured over time. Let vegetables dry after blanching but before freezing.”
Popular vegetables such as carrots and cauliflower should be cut into pieces before being blanched and can be kept for up to 12 months.
Garden peas should be shelled and blanched for one and a half minutes, but green beans, snap peas and wax beans should be kept in their shells and blanched for three minutes.
Fruit
Fruit needs more work when it comes to freezing. According to Bottomline Inc., the best way to preserve the texture and flavour of most fruit is to freeze it in sugar or syrup.
Generally, syrup is ideal for fruit eaten raw, while sugar works better for fruit used in recipes, as syrup can alter the taste.
To make syrup, dissolve two ¾ cups of sugar in four cups of boiling water to create a 40% syrup, then cool it before covering the fruit. When packing with sugar, simply sprinkle sugar over the fruit and gently mix until dissolved. Fruit frozen in syrup or sugar should be eaten within 12 months, while fruit frozen without them is best consumed within three to six months.
However, food experts at Success Rice have warned that not all foods can be frozen. Homeowners should be aware that eggs, creamy soups, sauces, dressings, pre-fried foods, lettuce or cucumber, etc, should not be frozen.
“The best-suited recipes for freezing include meats/seafood, broth-based soups, stews, casseroles, and curries.”