A well-stocked freezer is invaluable for making dinners in a flash, whipping up desserts, and enjoying fruits and vegetables out of season. The freezer is also an ideal place to store many pantry ingredients for longer periods of time, preventing spoilage and pests. What staples do you keep frozen?
Here's what I almost always have in my freezer:
• nuts, including almonds (whole and blanched), pine nuts, and pistachios
• cooked beans – at least two kinds, usually black and white
• homemade stock, frozen in small portions for quick soup making
• flavor builders like ginger, roasted garlic, and caramelized onions
• vegetables like winter greens, peas, and edamame
• fruit and berries for smoothies, compotes, and desserts
• flour and cornmeal
• puff pastry and phyllo dough for appetizers, entrées, and desserts
What are your freezer must-haves?
Related: What Are Essential Pantry Items for the Freezer?
(Image: Flickr member L. Marie licensed under Creative Commons)
TW Salt Mill by Wil...

Pizza, bacon, steaks, minced beef in 1lb packages, sausage, frozen entrées, chicken breasts and thighs, english muffins and bagels, leftovers, bags of frozen veggie and bacon fat.
Danish pastry dough (when I make it I double up and freeze half). Peas. Prawns. Gnocchi, bagged up iinto enough for me and my husband for one meal. Breadcrumbs. Berries. Whatever meat I've managed to buy on special offer and then frozen to use later.
Also the bowl of my ice cream maker, which has to be frozen for 24 hours before use. I try to keep it in there permanently so it's always ready.
We use our freezer a lot, and I want to buy another smallish one to keep in the garage so I can start doing more batch cooking.
I always make extra when I'm making pizza and pie dough and keep it in the freezer; staples also include berries, stock, tomatoes (frozen from summer), flour, nuts, rice, peas, chile peppers (especially long hot red peppers and thai red peppers for winter curries), lime leaves (also for curries). I don't really use stuff from the freezer for quick meals.
Flour, chocolate chips, butter, chicken breasts, bagels, bread, and left-over home-made sauces and soups.
Bacon, frozen veggies, frozen fruit (berries and/or bananas), stock, and some kind of meat for future use. I don't always have frozen soups, but I do always freeze soup when I make it.
meatballs, bacon, bay leaves, thyme, ginger, peas, chicken, stock, freezer jam, berries, bananas, leftovers.
Some of you must have huge deep freezers. I have a big fridge/freezer and I can hardly fit meat and some popsicles in mine!
I keep chopped green onion, onion, bell pepper and celery in plastic containers. Lemoncello. Meats, usually a veggie or 2 our of season I saved. Some surviving ice cream. That's usually all I have room for!
Meat, fruit, veggies.
Would the "not-wheat" flours do well in the freezer? (e.g. coconut or almond)
Bacon stays in the fridge (never have it long enough for it to go bad).
In the kitchen freezer: mostly the same list but also butter, because it's so much easier to make biscuits and pie crust with frozen butter, and sandwich bread because it takes me a long time to eat a loaf.
In the garage freezer: extra stock of summer fruits and veggies, the last few pieces from last year's hog, about a dozen chickens from the csa that we're rationing until they start delivering in the spring.
butter, peas, edamame, chicken stock, limeade, tilapia for quick meals, some sort of tortellini etc for emergency meals, pastry dough, berries.
I love the photo above; my first thought was "that is the freezer of someone who does not have kids!" Looks like my freezer six years ago. Now it is ice cube trays (we do still drink cocktails on occasion) jars full soup stock, a variety of juices, frozen tubes of yogurt, popsicles, bags of fruit and veggies, precut veggies, frozen pizzas, some chicken, bananas for banana bread, pumpkin for pumpkin bread... its a clustercuss in there!
Pizza dough, butter, puff pastry, phyllo dough, homemade tomato sauce, peas, corn, harissa, beans, leftover soups, cheese rinds ... Though we rarely cook quick meals out of it, other than the pizza or soup. I do wish I had a bigger freezer to stash stuff like lasagna and summer veggies, though.
ginger, yeast, nuts, home ground flour.
Lemongrass, mixed frozen herbs, butter, coconut milk in icecube trays, homemade stock, egg whites, bread.
Berries, overripe bananas, dried chiles, flaxseed meal, chia seeds, nuts, brown rice, wheat flour, portioned chicken stock (when I don't use up the whole quart), tomato paste in tablespoon portions, rinds of parm, ginger root, leftover soup and pasta sauces, peas, various types of chicken purchased on sale, butter, bacon
Bread. So much bread. I can barely find all of the things listed above in the bags and bags of bread. Pizza dough, butter, alcohol. And more.
home made stocks and sauces and breads, breadcrumbs, leftovers from a can of chipotles (there's always some of that), and butter, milk, cheese and cheese rinds (for soups) and the big bag of veg ends that'll become my next batch of stock.
frozen fruit- all seasons, homemade marinara, nuts, poultry, seafood, homemade pesto,mozzerella cheese, some-sort of- popsicles, ice cream, dark chocolate, veggies-any season, butter,bacon, bread, pizzas, & jasmine and brown rice. i won't bore you with the entire list. i wish i could freeze more. i try to be conscious of what happens to things if they aren't in safe freezer quality containers/bags.
who has successfully frozen milk?
Ground beef, divided into freezer bags and made flat (makes thawing super quick!) Chicken breasts, frozen peas, beans and broccoli. Frozen berries for pancakes and smoothies. A large variety of fun shaped ice cubes (including shot glasses made of ice). Containers full of stew and chili for my boyfriend's lunches, Hot hogs (for the mac and cheese) and juice.
Almost forgot the bottle of Jägermeister (for those ice cube shot glasses of course) and some whiskey stones.
Frozen spinach (the bagged loose-leaf stuff from Trader Joe's, not the Brick Of Doom)
Frozen peas
Shredded cheese (Mexican blend, Mozzarella, Cheddar, Swiss)
Frozen Garlic Naan (TJ's again)
Vodka
My freezer "stand by's" are:
-frozen veggies & berries
-Trader Joe's bambino pepperoni pizzas
-Trader Joe's frozen chocolate croissants
-Trader Joe's edamame
-Morning Star breakfast sausage patties
-whiskey rocks
-vodka
Frozen bananas.
Ice.
Other frozen fruits for smoothies.
Homemade stocks and sauces.
Nuts.
Ice.
KitchenAid Ice Cream maker attachment.
Handmade Eye Pillow I made from old tshirts and filled with rice.
Various frozen meats
Parbaked bread & bagels
Frozen peas and string beans
Frozen fruits for smoothies
Butter
Ravioli
Ice cream maker bowl
Random frozen TJs / Costco meals and things
I noticed no one said Liquor? Here's what I have:
Frozen individual pizzas
Meat
Some frozen dinners (last minute meals)
Ice cream - if we get
Pie Crust
Ice packs (for snack for my kid)
Ice trays
Vodka
Rum
sauces
We have one freezer in the basement devoted to the 1/2 grass fed natural beef we get every year.
That also contains alcohol and right now we have some ducks in there.
The other one is just stocks/ice cubes and sometime some frozen meals for when I have no time
looks like i've got a new 2012 resolution: stock the freezer!
all i've got in there right now is some rye flour, some ice cubes, and a quarter bottle of Beefeaters...
I realize that I am very spoiled in the space I have to store things. All the freezers are very full. I find it frusterating and pleasing that if I take out a pound or two of hamburger to make chilli or some kind of mass meal production to go back into the freezer it takes 10-20x the space to store them... there are a few things that I don't mass produce anymore for that reason, like chilli!
In my basement freezer (8 cu ft) I keep, frozen fruit for making jam, gallon jugs of apple cider (I think there's 6 in there), chickens for roasting and chickens for stock, about 1/4 of a cow, other meats, large portions of freezer meals (pot stickers, wontons, meatballs, [I freeze these in small ziplopcs and then toss them in a big one), homemade frozen pizzas and calzones.
In my laundry room freezer (5 cu ft), I keep portioned freezer meals (lasagnas, curries, etc), meat scraps and bones waiting to be turned into stock, frozen fruit for smoothies, litre jugs of apple cider, bacon and sausages, seafood, hashbrowns and a small bag each of the pot stickers, etc. and homemade frozen burritos, perogies,, and other things for speedy meals.
In my fridge freezer I keep curry pastes, garlic, ginger, herbs, portioned fruit for muffins, grated zucchini for bread, frozen pumpkin puree, 2 person frozen pear and apple crisps, meat that needs to be used up and leftovers that will be eaten quickly.
Currently all my freezers are too full to fit in my kitchenaid ice cream attachment :(
Homemade stock
buttermilk
broccoli (and some other veg, but mainly broccoli)
chana masala
mashed potatoes
raw chicken, sometimes marinating sometimes not, in two person portions
fruits & berries
pie dough (ideally formed into a single crust style pie shell already)
plenty of ice cubes (for brining, not many of our friends take ice in their drinks)
sweet pumpkin and/or potato puree
girl scout cookies!
Ice cream, of course.
Homemade stock in pint and quart portions, bread & English muffins, corn, peas, yeast, - bag of mixed dried beans for pie weights, bacon, chorizo, wonton wrappers and gyoza filling, a whole roasting chicken, ground beef, breakfast sausage, lemon cookie dough, and soup for lazy, cold nights. Also last time I was at my mom's, I saw she had frozen individual chipotle peppers with adobo, which I thought was brilliant because I can never seem to use up the whole can. Although it always got pushed to the back of the fridge where everything freezes anyway. I have since used the individually portioned method and find it very handy.
Chicken stock, veggie stock, breadcrumbs, frozen peas, frozen yam patties, frozen corn, Talenti gelato in Blood Orange and Sea Salt Caramel, Amy's burritos, frozen corn on the cob, vanilla ice cream, frozen berries, frozen shrimp and tilapia
You keep flour in your freezer? I always have frozen sweet corn, peas, and roasted bell peppers. In the summer I always have frozen fruit - berries, mangoes, peaches... for smoothies. And a container of frozen yogurt.
Pig's feet.
actual staples
Morningstar and Boca products (soy chicken, burgers, bacon, and so forth), bricks of homemade paneer, naan, juice concentrate, pop ice, stuffed pasta (ravioli or tortellini), corn, peas, okra, onions, pierogies, dinner rolls, garlic bread, ice, little ice cream cups, and frozen dog treats.
stock, bacon, puff pastry, berries, fresh pasta, leftovers
Meat, berries, veggies, leftovers, almond paste, pierogis, pie crusts, ice cream, bacon, butter, a can of grease, and paint brushes.
fish, veggies, stock, a bag for bones so i can make said stock.