Can we have a thread about food you can freeze that you might not have thought of?

[alittleteapot]

I'd like to start utilising my freezer more but am only just breaking past chicken drumsticks and frozen peas. I heard the other day that you can freeze cheese which I had no idea. I thought it might be useful for others as well as me if we could come up with a collective list of surprising but useful foods you can freeze...

Can you freeze grapes???

I've frozen skimmed milk before and not noticed a problem with it.

I go a step further with onions and sautee them before freezing - we get loads of onions all at the same time from the allotment and I can't be bothered to chop and cook them each time I need them for a particular dish. I am sure I read somewhere that as well as the topping, you can make up the filling for crumbles and freeze them too - do topping and filling separately or else the crumble topping will go all soggy!

Good show!

poo in pastry

egg whites - if you have them left over from making custard or hollandaise for eg. Make sure you mark how many are in the portion though, otherwise it's hard to work out afterwards. Then you can make meringue when you have enough.

Orange and lemon peel if you intend to make marmalade or candied peel.

Butter

Milk (though full fat doesn't work as well IME, and homogenised is better)

Sliced bread - you can just peel a slice off and toast from frozen.

Mashed potato - one of my quick mid-week meals is sausages and pre-made frozen mash, just bunged in the oven together. It takes about an hour to cook but is totally hands-free.

Herbs - if you have a bunch of fresh herbs getting past their best then snip the leaves off into a freezer bag and label (they all look the same when frozen!) They wilt when defrosted but are fine for using in cooking - just crumble the leaves into your sauce instead of chopping or mash into your garlic butter or whatever. I do this with basil, coriander, parsley and tarragon among others.

I've frozen skimmed before and it was fine.

You can't defrost it quickly though for some reason - it has to be left out overnight and not run under the hot tap or microwaved or anything, if you do that it goes weird and cottage cheesey when you put it in hot coffee.

But defrosted on the side overnight, it's fine.

I don't bother emptying it out either. 2 pinters in plastic seem to work fine - you get the very occasional split but I can only recall that happening once or twice, ever.

poo in pastry ?

Re frozen grapes, funnily enough my MW recommended them to me as a good labour food, but I wasn't organised enough and went into labour before I could be arsed to freeze anything

My friend swears that frozen bananas taste like white chocolate. I was not convinced, but they do taste nice.

lol at poo in pastry. when dd1 is arsing around and we're asking her what she wants to eat, we often offer 'a poo on a plate'... that gets her attention.

I do freeze packets of pitta bread, take out one at a time and pop in toaster.

Yes I freeze pitta bread too and also crumpets. I also cut up salmon fillets into toddler size portions and freeze.

This is all great info, thank you.

at frozen banana tasting like white chocolate.

Doesn't it taste like, y'know, banana?

We deliberately bought a bottle of cheapo wine and froze it in portions for cooking, because our wine tastes have got too extravagant and we can't afford to put our nice drinking wine into cooking

I've no idea WHY you would freeze poached or friedeggs, I just know you can...Subway do!

Can someone explain the concept of leftover wine to me?

This isn't surprising but useful... I batch make bolognese sauce then can use for spag bol/lasagne/chilli etc

If I am making a casserole or stew, I make double so one lot of cooking for 2 meals.

If we order a Chinese or Indian takeaway, we get more than we need to give a variety of dishes and the leftovers freeze really well.

I like to make my own pizzas. I make double the pizza dough and cook the spare pizza base for 5 mins then just take it out when I need it.

Makes me sound very organised - I don't always remember to buy/make more but well worth it when I do!

theyoungvisitor

what a great idea - i want to do your sausage and mash without the aggro, do you just bung frozen mash into the oven? or should i defrost it first?

why do i never think of these ideas, i always do too much mash!