Freezing & Storing Food

Want to learn about one of the most practical-yet-fun gatherings I’ve ever hosted? It was, wait for it, a freezer meal party! My mom and sisters came to my house to cook and assemble meals for our freezers. We built taco kits (so easy!), learned the best way to freeze eggs for breakfast, and prepped pork chops that can go straight into the slow cooker. It was a warm way to spend an afternoon: in the kitchen with people we love, cooking food to nourish us and our families.

It's not the plastic bag it came in.

So you signed up for a CSA. Your bounty is already starting to roll in, but wait — you’re having a hard time finishing things off with your busy spring schedule. That’s OK! Here are a few tips to help make sure you don’t let it go to waste, and to help you have tasty snacks when your CSA is a snow-covered memory later in the year.Well good news, you’ve stumbled upon a wealth of information.

While we’re talking about leaving things out on the counter, here’s another ingredient that sits on ours: Kosher salt and pepper in little dishes next to the stovetop. This is one of the first things we did when we started cooking regularly- a tip we learned from watching the Food Network many years ago…We tend to use up these little amounts quickly enough that they don’t get dirty or stale.

We don’t often think about it, but ice cube trays are some of the most useful tools in our kitchen. I rarely use them for their intended purpose — making ice. Instead, I rely on them all the time to create components for quick meals and to avoid wasting food. Here are 10 great uses for your ice cubes trays, aside from making ice. Avoid wasting leftover fresh herbs by freezing them for later.

When it comes time to prep for a big meal, I’m all doing as much work as possible ahead of time, which is why I spent the three months leading up to my wedding making and freezing fruit pies destined for the dessert table. Along the way I learned that frozen unbaked homemade pies are not only incredibly convenient, they also bake up better than freshly-made pies.

I’m always excited when I purchase cilantro. In my neighborhood you can get four bunches for a dollar, and even if I don’t need all four bunches I still bring them home. I figure I’ll find a way to use all of them up, but inevitably there’s one sad bunch all soggy and brown in the back of the fridge a week later. But not anymore! Curious about which methods kept cilantro fresh longer, Jodi Torpey of the blog Vegetable Gardener tested a few out.

The ability to freeze cookies and cookie dough is a such a lifesaver when I don’t have time to spend the whole day baking. It also means that there isn’t a temptation to eat up the entire batch of cookies; the cookie dough is ready-to-go in the freezer for unexpected guests or when I need a comfort food fix; and if I get my act together and freeze a variety of cookies, a cookie plate is at my fingertips.

If your freezer makes ice, then your ice cube tray is probably sitting empty, frozen and alone, in the freezer door, or abandoned in the back of a cabinet somewhere. Go and get it right this instant, because the ice cube tray is a brilliant cook’s tool, and can — nay, should! — be used for freezing many other things besides ice. Individual storage areas? Check. Small portions? Check. Totally freezer-friendly? Obviously.

It’s easy to eat more salads and greens as the weather warms up. You might crave something cool and crisp, or the CSA you joined is kicking into high gear and loading you up with lettuces and greens. Do you know the best ways to wash, dry, and store your greens? A little how-to can help make prep easier, plus extend the life of your produce. Here are our best tips!

Q: Can you freeze cooked quinoa? Sent by Williams Editor: Yes, you can definitely freeze cooked quinoa; it’s one of our favorite healthy meal shortcuts. Let the cooked quinoa cool down completely, then transfer it to a resealable plastic bag. Press all the air out before sealing, then pat the quinoa into an even layer before freezing. It’s ready to go whenever you need a quinoa fix; just thaw overnight in the refrigerator!

Leftover parfaits! For a few years now, people have been turning to Mason jars when it’s time to pack up Thanksgiving dinner. Folks are simply layering all the parts of the epic meal into jars. We’re very torn on this packing method, for a few reasons. Pretty much everyone has Mason jars. Even if you don’t, you can buy them online for less than $15 for 12. They’re portable single servings. The work of doling out the food is done at once.

Several days ago, a strange video emerged on Reddit involving a grape and a glass of cold water. A user who goes by the name u/Rollertreatment shared footage of the phenomenon, in which a person (who goes unidentified) dips a grape, which appears to be frozen, in a glass of water. Ice crystals spontaneously begin to grow around the grape, forming a gorgeous snowflake-like sphere.

We got our first dusting of snow this past weekend as we pulled out holiday lights and hunted for a Christmas tree, and a week of hearty soups sounds like the most soul-filling meal plan imaginable. I’m also taking the opportunity to make some big-batch some soups with help from my slow cooker in order to stock the freezer for my family, as we have a bit of travel and some house guests in coming up in December.

I really love butternut squash — it’s sweet and absolutely packed with flavor and fiber. You can roast it, purée it into soups or smoothies, and add it to any kind of casserole under the sun. Recently I started stocking cubed and frozen butternut squash on hand at all times — just like I do peas and corn. Not just because butternut is a vegetable my kids will eat readily (or because I can use the bag for boo-boos), but because it’s just incredibly versatile.

This is the most wonderful time of year for pumpkin-lovers because just after Halloween and before Thanksgiving, canned pumpkin is everywhere — and is incredibly cheap. Now is also the best time to stock your freezer with homemade pumpkin purée, and we’ve got a few tips that will give you more bang for your pumpkin buck. And don’t worry — these tips will help you if you just find yourself with a bit of canned pumpkin that you don’t want to waste.

One of the biggest challenges of packing my kids’ school lunches is seeing — and cleaning up — the food that comes back home. Not only is it a major bummer to see the food go to waste, but it also leaves me wondering if my kids spent the afternoon hungry. Sliced apples — beloved by my kids at home — used to always come back in their lunch boxes uneaten.

A smartly stocked freezer is a true asset for a solo cook. It ensures easy, fast meals for one are always within arm’s reach, no matter the day or occasion. And, of course, it’s a great place to stash leftovers. Here are seven ways to stock your freezer if you’re cooking for one. Keep a few bags of frozen fruits and vegetables in your freezer and you’ll always have something wholesome to reach for.

When it comes to stocking the freezer, the Kitchn team really practices what we preach. We’ve shared all sorts of information on freezer-aisle finds that cut down on meal prep and the pantry items to keep stashed away in your freezer to help prolong shelf life. And today we’re sharing the foods our editors keep stocked in their freezers at all times. Maybe you’ll pick up an idea or two from the mix!

By nature, stir-fries are quick-cooking meals that can be a breeze to pull together on weeknights. Fire up your wok, and watch dinner come together fast (like, under the 10-minute mark fast). But that doesn’t account for the vegetable prep — the washing, peeling, slicing, and dicing (and cleanup that goes along with it) before you can start cooking. There’s a way to make this weeknight wonder easier still, and it starts with a trip down the freezer aisle.

I love having frozen veggies on hand. It’s an easy way to go an extra day or two before I need to hit the grocery store or turn my leftover lunch into a more substantive meal. Recently, though, I was perusing the frozen veggie aisle at my Harris Teeter, and I noticed something: They have eight kinds of frozen broccoli, and some cost more than twice as much as others. What gives? At first glance, there’s not a huge price range — all the bags of broccoli cost between $1.

I love meal planning. It is one of my favorite ways to feel prepared for each week and reduce my daily stress. But meal prep? The final step in meal planning where you chop veggies, make dressings, maybe even cook some meals? I’m really bad at it. Finding time — even just a few hours — over the weekend to cook is probably as hard for you as it is for me. Lately, I’ve been relying on the freezer aisle to help me prep parts of our meal plans to save me time during the week.

Since I grew up on frozen vegetables that were cooked in the microwave until they turned to mush, I wrote them all off as soon as I was an adult. I avoided the freezer aisle completely and proclaimed I’d only buy fresh vegetables from then on out. Then I walked into Trader Joe’s, where it’s basically impossible to write off the freezer aisle. And it was there I discovered the one frozen vegetable that completely changed my opinion: frozen artichokes.

While I don’t yet have the space in my life for a full-fledged garden, I have happily maintained a small herb garden on my balcony for years. By this time in the summer, it’s overflowing with so much green that I can hardly manage it all, despite constantly clipping sprigs of basil, rosemary, or parsley for whatever I am cooking. So I am always on the hunt for ways to trim down my plants and preserve their goodness for the colder months ahead, when things are much less abundant.

As a kid, my summertime food fantasy was to have a chest freezer brimming with Hot Pockets, Swan’s frozen food treats, and ice cream cones. Our actual summer fridge was more like a few bags of Otter Pops and some frozen chicken breasts, so I spent a lot of time trying to get invited over to friends’ houses whose parents did get Swan’s deliveries (and had a pool!) Now as a parent myself, I realize what a valuable tool my freezer will be this summer.

How to store it and bring it back to life (or give it a new one).

Here's how I make my slow cooker the hero of meal prep.

As someone who could eat her weight (and then some) in cheese, wasting even the tiniest bit sounds like a criminal offense. Yet, even I’ve been there. I sometimes grab too many wedges of this and that and am left with a fridge drawer so full that no matter how many grilled cheese sandwiches I make, I can’t get through all the cheese. Then, before I know it, things start to get moldy. Luckily, there is a super-smart and simple solution to this problem: Freeze your cheese.

There are a couple of options depending on how many hours you've got until dinner.

If I could implore you to do one thing whenever you cook brisket, it would be this: Make extra brisket and freeze it. Beef brisket is better the day after it is cooked, but it can be momentarily life-changing when you remember you have some ready and waiting in the freezer. This simple tip for freezing those leftovers will ensure that you can take the leftovers and turn them into breakfast, lunch, or dinner anytime.

While I am a self-proclaimed morning person, I am not immune to the frenzied morning rush that happens on weekdays. If it wasn’t for my freezer, I’m not quite sure how I’d manage a breakfast that’s both totally satisfying and simple as can be. I make a point to stock my freezer not just with meals for extra-busy nights, but also nourishing breakfast options. Here’s my simple trick for making it happen. It’s time to add batch cooking to your meal prep routine.

If you’ve ever come home at the end of the day tired and hungry with a serious hankering for a warm, hearty bowl of chili, this smart trick is going to make you feel like a total genius the next time it happens. After making a lot of chili this winter, I learned a really smart trick that ensures I always have homemade chili on hand. The first step is to cook an extra-big batch of chili, by doubling (or even tripling) a recipe.

Pure vanilla extract calls for just two ingredients: alcohol for extraction and vanilla beans. As you can imagine, it has the shelf life of basically forever, since its ingredients are pretty shelf-stable. With so many cork-topped vials of DIY vanilla extract on the web, there’s also some misinformation about how and where you should store homemade vanilla extract for gift giving.

Measuring cups and measuring spoons can be tricky to store because even though they sort of nest, they’re always flopping around and getting lost in the nether-regions of your drawer. If you keep your measuring tools connected, they all get dirty when you need just one. If you take them apart, they get lost, one by one. But if you’re a baker or someone who really likes to follow a recipe, it’s very important to actually be able to find your measuring tools when you need them.

Saturday pancakes do double duty in my house. Their first job is to fill our bellies on Saturday morning, between cartoons and snuggles, but the leftover pancakes have a second life as a quick weekday breakfast during the week. When a double or triple batch of pancakes yields an abundance of extra flapjacks, this is how we prep them for freezing and then reheat them as needed. Start with your favorite pancake recipe and make sure the pancakes are fully cooked and cooled before freezing.

One of the most important discoveries we made while developing and refining the recipes in Modernist Bread is that yeast is among the most resilient life-forms we’ve ever encountered (and we encounter many in our lab, which we share with a bunch of biologists). As it turns out, freezing temperatures do not kill all the yeast and lactic acid bacteria in a preferment or starter. Some die, but most remain dormant while frozen.

While marinades are brilliant at turning cuts of meat that can often dry out when cooked into flavorful, moist meals, it’s easy to forget to plan ahead and get that meat into a marinade well before you’re ready to cook it. Enter: the freezer marinade, when you bring that meat home from the grocery store toss it in a marinade first and freeze it right in it. It will absorb the marinade whenever you decide to thaw it, and then all you have to do is bake, sauté, or grill it.

Your freezer wants to be your best friend. Let it. Who else will make your food taste better than before? Check out this list of items better when consumed frozen as well as those that are better for having been frozen. You’ll find new life for many of your favorites just by giving them a chance to chill out. Some things are pretty tasty with a chill still on them. They tend to lean toward the sweeter side, which means a cool dessert is always close at hand.

Soup night is one of my favorites. About once a week in cooler months, I rummage through my freezer for little nuggets of gold that I can quickly turn into soup. Soup is so forgiving and can be made with the smallest bits of different things. Paired with a loaded bread basket, soup night is a winner. Here are 10 foods to stash in your freezer for quick and easy soup suppers. A good stock or broth is key to a great soup.

If you follow the golden rule of watermelon prep — cutting just the amount you need — you will likely need to store a larger piece of cut watermelon, in addition to all the bite-sized pieces that were cut up. Here’s the best way to do it. The best way to store any piece of cut melon, regardless of the size, is wrapping the cut end with plastic wrap and storing it in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Have you ever opened up your freezer to find that your once red beef is looking a little brown? Or taken a pint of ice cream out only to discover the top is covered in ice crystals? Freezer burn happens to the best of us. Here’s what you should know. When you see that your red meat has taken on a dull brown shade, or your chicken has gone a bit pale, it’s easy to worry it’s gone bad — but it’s totally safe to eat!

Not everyone's freezer is 100 percent consistent. Make sure you know what to look for.

Picture this: You’re doing your weekly grocery shop and there’s a great deal on a family pack of chicken thighs. And now that you’re looking in the meat section, you were thinking maybe you’d have a cookout this weekend and the ground beef is on sale. And you might as well stock up on buns because, well, it’s still summer-ish and you need buns. Somehow you walk out of the store with more than enough to feed you, your family, and then some.

As long as your freezer is working at its optimal level, keeping food consistently at 0°F, the food inside will be safe to eat indefinitely. There’s no safety concern with anything that’s been properly frozen. The real issue is just how much you’ll actually enjoy it, as some foods might not have the taste or texture you prefer when eating something a year later. Not willing to risk eating leathery meat? We don’t blame you.

With a package of ground beef in the freezer, you’re only minutes away from a spontaneous grilling session, Taco Tuesday, or a hearty meatloaf. This home cook’s staple is a breeze to freeze and can stash safely for months. Here’s what you need to know about it. Time is of the essence from the moment you purchase refrigerated ground beef, said Laura Hagen, senior director of the Culinary Center at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.

The sunshine’s nice and all, but if we had to pick one thing to bottle up and save each summer, it’d be the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables that pop up at farmers markets all season long. For food writer Jamie DeMent, it’s a total must-do. Her grandmother had a special kitchen dedicated just to canning!

Maine’s cold, clean water makes it ideal for seafood of all kind: lobster, to be sure, but also oysters, those sweet and briny bivalves that we often associate with cooler climes. But, in Maine, you can (and should!) eat oysters all year round. We caught up with oyster farmers Valy Steverlynck and Eric Horne to find out the best way to shuck your oysters — and how to eat them (besides slurped straight from the shell).

Knowing how to store them is just as important as knowing how to pick a good peach.

Some might argue that the very best part of summertime cobblers, crisps, and crumbles is the sweet and jammy fruit filling, but I firmly believe it’s the crispy topping that makes it complete. The crunchy bite of oat-loaded crumbles and the delicate crackle of a cobbler’s biscuits are a huge part of the appeal.

When it gets hot outside, we tend to turn to our freezers for relief (read: ice cream!). But if it’s been months since you’ve had a look in there, it’s likely that the compartment is just full of random bags, boxes, and whatnots that are a pain to sort through. If you’re frustrated, just chill out — and try these ingenious hacks for getting any kind of freezer under control.

So you finally got around to pulling your ice cream maker from the depths of your kitchen cabinet, and you’re getting ready to churn up a batch of this cool, creamy treat. In addition to narrowing down your flavor options (so many choices!), there’s one more task at hand: finding the right container to store the ice cream. Here are five choices that get the job done.

It’s early June, which means one thing: Strawberry season is here! This time of year, I can’t get enough of these deeply flavored, rich berries. I love them so much, I can barely wait until I get home from the farmers market to gobble them up — but I know that to truly get the most out of my berry haul, they need a little bit of prep work. You’ve probably done this before, but a quick refresher never hurt.

There’s not a time when jello or unflavored powdered gelatin hasn’t taken up a small space in the corner of my pantry. And it’s not because I make jello on a regular basis. Jello simply falls into that category of ingredients I know will come in handy at some point, and because it won’t go bad anytime soon. As you might have guessed, dry powdered jello has a pretty lengthy shelf life. We’re talking years. Most boxes are stamped with a use-by date.

Never pour them down the drain again.

One of my favorite things to get pulled from the ground in this bright, fresh season are spring onions. They’re often forgotten, due to impending excitement over things like asparagus and ramps, but they deserve just as much enthusiasm. Spring onions are essentially just young onions that are harvested before they have a long summer to mature into the larger, paper-skinned ones we eat regularly. That’s exactly what makes them so special!

Keep a bag of frozen tortellini tucked away in your freezer and you can rest easy knowing that a quick meal is always at the ready. This series on fast tortellini dinners will show you how to transform frozen tortellini into dinner using pantry staples and a few surprising techniques. Pasta sauce is just the beginning! Dinner tonight should most definitely be this almost-instant pasta soup.

I firmly believe that having chocolate on hand — whether in the form of powder, baking bars, snacking bars, or chips — is always a good idea. You never know when the craving for brownies will strike, when an unexpected celebration calls for cake, or when you just need to break off a square of good dark chocolate and have a moment. As important as it is to have the sweet stuff on hand, it’s equally important to store it properly to maintain freshness.

Time to bring your winter stew into weeknight territory with a few freezer shortcuts. Start off by spending a little time in the freezer aisle of your grocery store and you’ll find a multitude of smart shortcuts that make for hearty stews with minimal prep. These little gems bulk up the vegetable content of a stew while adding rich, aromatic flavor — plus, they fancy it up without even trying.

Whether you’re getting a head start on holiday baking or have more cookies than you know what to do with, remember that your freezer is your number-one ally. From mounds of cookie dough to baked cookies, here are five important things to know about freezing cookies. While most types of cookie dough freeze wonderfully, some doughs work better than others.

Whether you’re trying to get a head start on holiday baking, or you find yourself with extra cookie dough or a bunch of baked cookies, the freezer just might prove the ideal spot to stash them. Here are three clear signs your cookie recipe is freezer-friendly. In general, cookie recipes — like shortbread, sugar cookies, drop cookies, and icebox cookies — that include a lot of butter make for a dough that freezes, and eventually bakes up, quite well.

After Thanksgiving dinner comes to an end and you’ve snapped out of your turkey coma, it’s time to tackle the leftovers. From the turkey to the sides to the sweets, here are the best tips to help you use up, freeze, and repurpose everything that remains. Get ready to hit the ground running. Arm yourself with recipe inspiration to tackle to leftovers, from the turkey to the stuffing to the pies, before you even sit down to Thanksgiving dinner.

Coolers can feel like the workhorse of summer, destined for holding our food for camping trips or keeping drinks cold at the beach. But coolers can save your sanity during the holidays, too. A cooler (or two) can do more than just hold Thanksgiving wine and cider — it can also do double duty as either extra fridge space or as a warming drawer for sides and pies while you wait for the turkey to roast. Here are two easy ways to put a cooler to work for a holiday.

Keep those precious green jewels fresh as long as possible.

As we head into soup season (otherwise known as fall and winter), I believe we are divided into two camps of home cooks: those who keep a bag of bones in the freezer and those who don’t (yet!). Which camp do you fall in? Are you the kind of cook who keeps a bag of bones in the freezer for soup-making? We’ve preached about the value of stashing vegetable scraps and Parmesan rinds in the freezer to boost the flavor of stocks, soups, and sauces. Well, bones are no different!

While you can’t beat homemade broth, we also love how easily you can make something delicious and nourishing from a box or two of the store-bought stuff when needed. However, there’s a secret to making extra-flavorful soup from it: your freezer. Keep a well-stocked freezer full of ingredients that add flavor and substance and that boxed broth will fool you. Here are seven essentials to have on hand. Keep a few bags of frozen veggies in the freezer to toss into a soup on a whim.

You did the work and baked up a beautiful batch of muffins or quick breads. If you find yourself with leftovers, make sure you’re storing these baked goods correctly for maximum freshness. Before you pack muffins or quick bread aways, cool them completely. After coming out of the oven, let these baked goods briefly cool in the pan before transferring them to a wire rack to cool all the way. Even if they’re just a tiny bit warm, muffins and quick bread continue to emit heat.

Becky Rosenthal, the blogger behind The Vintage Mixer and author of the newly published Fast to the Table Freezer Cookbook, believes your freezer is good for more than those long-forgotten bags of peas and a few half-eaten pints of ice cream. It’s actually a treasure chest for fast dinners, satisfying breakfasts, and smarter takes on the meals in between. Even more, the freezer helps you hold on to favorite ingredients and flavors as we move from season to season.

French fries are oddly reserved for fancy steak houses and drive-thru windows, yet this beloved potato side could be homemade and stocked in the freezer for the next time a fry craving strikes. It only takes four steps to freeze, and then these fries can be baked (or fried if you’re a die-hard fry fan) and eaten in less than 30 minutes. Ketchup for dipping is optional, but highly recommended. My local grocer actually has a whole dedicated potato section of the freezer aisle.

The Sunday Scaries are a real thing. Nervousness about the week ahead sets in just around breakfast time — here’s a way to conquer it. Do this when you’re making that leisurely pancake breakfast in your pajamas at 10 a.m. and know that Monday morning is going to be a little less painful because of it. It’s a little tip, but a brilliant one. Double up that batch of pancakes or waffles and cook them all up.

No more wasting any of your Sunday meal prep.

There are a few frozen food hacks that can improve your lunch. Freezing a water bottle to serve as both an ice pack and cool refreshment is one, and freezing soups, yogurts, and even smoothies so they don’t slosh around is another — but what about foods you can pack completely frozen that will thaw to eat by lunchtime? Here are 10 frozen foods you can pack for lunches without thawing.

Make-ahead breakfast sandwiches are the ultimate morning miracle — the gift that keeps on giving. The magic behind these sandwiches is big-batch cooking. With upfront planning and prep, they reward you with a hot, satisfying breakfast for days to come. Staple ingredients like condiments and spreads have the power to boost the flavor of breakfast sandwiches in a big way.