- Freezing helps lower your expenses and scale back meals waste, however some high-water meals flip mushy and lose texture after thawing.
- Dairy merchandise like yogurt and smooth cheeses, in addition to uncooked eggs in shells, don’t freeze nicely and may turn out to be unsafe.
- For greatest outcomes, pre-chill cooked meals, use hermetic containers and keep away from freezing cans or refreezing thawed meat.
Freezing is usually a handy, low-cost strategy to scale back waste, lower your expenses and stockpile ready-to-go meals or elements. Freezing meals stops the clock on spoilage, and it’s typically extra handy for residence cooks than preservation methods like canning, drying or fermenting.
“Freezing is incredible because it preserves food’s safety and shelf life, allowing us to keep food for making ahead and have a taste of the seasons year-round,” says Ali Rosewriter of the cookbook Modern Freezer Meals: Simple Recipes to Cook Now and Freeze for Later.
Subjecting the improper meals to sub-zero temperatures, nevertheless, can lead to a soggy, unpalatable mess after thawing. That’s sometimes due to how freezing impacts moisture. “When food freezes, the water inside turns into tiny ice crystals, which puncture cellular walls and change the texture of the food once it’s thawed,” Rosen says. “The less water and the less opportunity for food to become mushy, the better it will freeze.” Here’s an inventory of eight meals you need to by no means retailer within the freezer, plus ideas for profitable freezing and thawing that you need to use in your kitchen.
1. Salad Vegetables
Fresh veggies like lettuce, celery and cucumbers get their crispness from excessive water content material, however freezing will make them limp, squishy and unfit to your salad bowl. Avoid freezing these for something however smoothies, Rosen says, the place you gained’t discover textural points.
2. Citrus Fruits
The identical goes for citrus fruits. They gained’t maintain up nicely after freezing, however as with salad veggies, you may peel, lower up and freeze items to make use of in smoothies later. And you may freeze their juice. Squeeze lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruits, and use ice dice trays for simple portioning, then stash the cubes in a zip-top bag or hermetic container for longer-term freezer storage.
3. Yogurt and Sour Cream
Though dairy meals like butter and ice cream freeze nicely, others are higher left within the fridge. “It’s about fat content versus water,” Rosen says. Cultured dairy merchandise like yogurt, bitter cream and créme fraïche comprise larger quantities of moisture than fats. The massive ice crystals fashioned throughout freezing have an effect on the meals’s protein construction, inflicting moisture to separate out and making a grainy texture after thawing. It’s potential to make use of frozen and defrosted bitter cream or yogurt in recipes or smoothies, Rosen says, however they gained’t be as tasty for consuming on their very own.
4. Artisan Cheeses
Freezing will injury the fragile textures of specialty cheeses like Brie, blue cheese, and Taleggio. Low temperatures may also deactivate useful microbes and enzymes that develop the flavors in positive cheese. However, some agency or semi-firm kinds which are comparatively low in moisture, like Parmesan, Pecorino, block Cheddar, and low-moisture part-skim mozzarella, can freeze surprisingly nicely so long as they’re correctly sealed. “The lower the moisture of the cheese, the less you’ll notice a difference, especially if you’re cooking it and changing the texture anyway,” Rosen says. If potential, thaw laborious cheeses within the fridge for a minimum of just a few days earlier than utilizing. This permits moisture to redistribute evenly all through the cheese, enhancing texture.
5. Eggs within the Shell
Scrambled eggs freeze nicely in preparations like breakfast burritos, however uncooked eggs within the shell are ruined at sub-zero temperatures. That’s as a result of the water in eggs expands when frozen, cracking the shell and growing meals security danger. Instead, take away eggs from the shell, beat them to mix the white and the yolk, and freeze them in hermetic containers. When you’re prepared to make use of them, thaw the frozen uncooked eggs in a single day within the fridge. They’re greatest utilized in recipes with different elements quite than cooked on their very own.
6. Defrosted Meat and Seafood
It’s completely protected to freeze meat that’s bought recent—simply be certain that it’s well-wrapped to forestall freezer burn. However, it’s greatest to not refreeze beforehand frozen and defrosted meat or seafood. Refreezing can create a dry, disagreeable texture in these meals when you put together them.
7. Raw or Cooked Potatoes
The excessive water content material in uncooked potatoes makes them a poor candidate for freezing—they’ll be mushy, watery and never value cooking when you thaw them out. You’ll have higher outcomes with cooked potatoes, however their texture gained’t be as tasty as when freshly made. If you determine to freeze cooked potatoes (or different cooked meals), be certain that the meals has already been chilled, resulting in a shorter freezing time. “The ice crystals are larger the longer food takes to freeze. That’s why you hear the term ‘flash-frozen’ in relation to freshness—the speed is what keeps it better preserved,” Rosen says. “If you don’t have time to cool something down, just stick it in the fridge overnight before freezing.”
8. Canned Foods
It’s by no means a good suggestion to position cans of meals within the freezer (or one other space for storing the place temperatures drop under freezing). As moisture within the meals expands underneath sub-zero situations, the can’s seal could be broken, creating a possible meals security hazard. “You don’t want to freeze anything tightly contained, like an egg or canned food,” Rosen says. Transfer canned meals you’d prefer to freeze into hermetic, freezer-safe containers earlier than freezing for greatest outcomes—simply don’t fill them too excessive, or the lids would possibly pop off as soon as frozen.
The Bottom Line
Freezing is an effective way to protect many meals for later use, however sure objects aren’t really helpful for freezer storage. High-moisture meals like salad greens, citrus fruits and uncooked potatoes will flip mushy after freezing. Yogurt, bitter cream and artisan cheese will develop a watery, grainy or in any other case disagreeable texture. Because freezing causes the moisture in meals to broaden, keep away from storing entire eggs within the shell or canned items within the freezer. For greatest outcomes, pre-chill cooked meals within the fridge, retailer meals in hermetic packaging or freezer-safe containers and keep away from overfilling containers destined to your freezer.
