To have a freezer but never freeze food?

[Magnumcarta]

Except ice and ice cream.

just don’t ever need to as eat everything fresh.

Is it a very small freezer?

I don’t make the most of the freezer but don’t really understand why you wouldn’t have things like breadcrumbs from the heels of bread, stock from the weekend chicken, leftover bits of chilli or ginger and frozen peas and beans . Do you always finish a packet? YANBUas that is how you organise your food but you might find it can be helpful.

I don't understand why you think you might be unreasonable to use your own freezer the way you want to?

My freezer is usually filled with yellow sticker bargains.

no it’s an American fridge freezer.

I always used dried herbs and fresh meats.

How big is the freezer? Seems a waste of energy if you’ve got a largish one and very little in it!

Is it just you or a family?

Do you never buy food on potion and freeze some to save money?

No peas? I always tend to have peas! Ice cubes? Leftovers?

Mine has breadcrumbs, chopped garlic and ginger, frozen herbs, tubs of home made pasta sauce that I can use as a meal for the kids, portions of bolognaise as I sometimes batch cook so I have healthy meals when I'm busy, frozen fruit (for smoothies), and then I made a whole load of beef burgers and froze them.

Frozen vegetables
Frozen fruit
Frozen fish (much of what is sold fresh is frozen on the ships anyhow)
Frozen seafood
Grated cheese (good use for a food processor)
Freeze butter in portions

I could fill a freezer up without ever buying anything processed or even freezing things like portions of chicken/beef/etc.

We always have things like left overs - If I make for example a chilli I will make extra and freeze so that another meal can be an easy defrost and cook up some rice.
We have some frozen veg like peas, sweetcorn and spinach which are eay to chuck in a pasta.

Kids love having frozen fruit to chuck into a smoothie.

Frozen bread.

Ice cream / Ice / Ice lollies etc

I almost always have chicken stock in the freezer, and I bulk cook onion, carrot and celery as the basis of soup and casseroles and freeze that. And small containers of often unidentifiable portions of curry, chilli, ragu etc

Frozen veg (peas and spinach usually) and frozen fruit sit along side my ice cream and ice packs.

It’s a bit daft to be running a freezer if you’re not really using it.

Weve just changed to a smaller freezer now it’s just me and DH - we freeze bread as we don’t get through a whole loaf or batch of homemade bread quickly, homemade soup - a pot is 8-9 portions and things like ‘spag Bol’ sauce as again one batch is 8 portions. A bit of frozen veg (peas, edamame or broad beans) and it’s quite full.

But if you’ve got a large family and can get through a whole pot of soup, spag bol, chilli or whatever in one go then sure, there’s no need to freeze. My parents didn’t have a fridge till my brothers left home at which point they got a fridge freezer.

I still have a full drawer of chillis i grew in 2022. I need to make a batch of chilli jelly soon.

I forgot about frozen peas - surely the OP doesn’t just eat fresh peas? Everyone uses frozen peas, don’t they?

I think some things like chilli improve from being in the freezer.
I freeze all sorts of things that would get chucked - coconut milk, cheese. I think it’s one of the greatest resources in the kitchen.

What you don't have fish fingers, a spare loaf of bread, frozen peas/sweet corn, hash browns, a couple of pizzas, some sausage rolls? Surely you don't buy everything fresh everyday?

Mind you when I was a claims manager and dealt with a freezer food claim it was never Birdseye products but whole salmon, king prawns and sirloin steak 🤣

Depends on if you ever waste any of the fresh food. We’d struggle to get through bread without a freezer. And freeze any leftovers. Always handy to have a frozen pizza or two for emergencies!

I think freezers run more efficiently if they are full

Unless you grow and hunt everything yourself,a lot of "fresh" food can be a year old,if it's been shipped in from abroad. I've got fruit veg in one of ours we grew last year. Quick frozen stuff is far fresher.

I always have bread and milk in mine for emergencies. I buy salmon when it is on offer and freeze it. Plenty of "legitimate" uses.

Freezers are energy-hungry.

You don’t even have the dead body of an ex in it?
waste of freezer space imo.

Can concur. Also, the freezers always seemed to know when people went off on holiday and always self destructed ready for their return.

I'm sure it was purely coincidental when checking for previous claims that they all had Louis Vuitton luggage and solid gold chains lost in transit on their holidays.

I buy meat at Costco so I usually parcel it out into meal-sized portions and freeze it. I also freeze bread. I live in Ohio so we have lots of good, fresh, local produce in the summer, but anything "fresh" in the winter has been picked and transported across the country. So I buy fresh produce in season. Whatever isn't in season I buy frozen since it's usually frozen immediately after picking.

I also freeze stuff that I grow or make myself. And ingredients for homemade broth (bones, celery tops, carrot pieces, etc.). I put them all in freezer bags and when I have enough to fill the Crock-Pot I cook it all day. Then I freeze the broth in 1-cup portions.

I only use mine for frozen veg, ice cubes ice cream etc, I have a friend who freezes everything, even left over takeaway, which I find quite grim, and I’m not sure why.

I believe the advice is to put a pillow or something to take up the empty room, to save energy costs of cooling the air.