The question arose, what to cook for dinner? Look in the freezer. Need to leave home for a few days and leave some food for your husband? Let him look in the freezer!
I share ideas for freezing a wide variety of foods and semi-finished products that will help you save a lot of time, nerves and money. After all, taking already made preparations out of the refrigerator and finishing them is much easier than creating a dish from scratch.
Frozen food storage
If space in your freezer allows, you can store broths and pureed tomatoes, for example, in plastic glasses. If there is little space, use special rectangular containers or Tetra-Pak boxes, they are much more compact. Vegetables, mushrooms, herbs and other “loose” items can be simply stored in bags.
Thus, freezing meat, vegetables and other products is a very simple matter. It’s worth spending a little time once, and you will be provided with preparations for many dishes for several months.
Frozen food is “dead” food - a myth
Freezing is the best way to preserve life, invented by nature itself. After all, everything freezes in winter: plants, tubers, seeds, roots, etc. – during the cold season they are frozen and defrosted several times. And at the same time, not only do they not “die”, but in the spring they begin to grow, bloom and bear fruit!
To preserve living plants, nature, unlike humans, does not cook, pickle, salt, smoke, etc. Nature is freezing! All minerals are preserved after freezing. And most vitamins too. It is better to freeze strawberries, raspberries or cherries than to make jam from them. This way they will retain more vitamins and be healthier.
Frozen food is not tasty - a myth
If you choose the right products and follow all the principles of freezing, packaging and storage, the taste of your food will never fade, much less spoil. And in some cases it will become even better (for example, when freezing semi-finished cabbage rolls).
To extend the shelf life of products to 10-12 months, you just need to properly prepare them for storage in the freezer. It is very important not to skip steps such as washing, blanching, drying, cooling and freezing in the freezer. Product packaging also plays an important role in preserving the full range of taste of your products and ready-made dishes. They need to be carefully and airtightly packaged using special freezer containers, cling film, durable plastic bags, foil or parchment paper.
And to prevent frozen foods from turning into a solid piece of ice, it is very important to completely dry them from moisture, cool them in the refrigerator, if you need to freeze them further, and only then completely freeze them. If whole berries, such as strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, are frozen, then they need to be frozen on a board or other flat tray so that they do not touch each other and only then poured into a bag or tray.
This also applies to dumplings, dumplings, meatballs and other similar products.
You can freeze fully cooked food - true
Fully cooked food lends itself well to freezing and, if you follow all the rules for freezing/thawing, its taste after freezing will not only not disappoint you, but will also pleasantly surprise you.
Having frozen ready meals at home is very convenient. For example, if there is a lack of time for cooking, unexpected guests or another force majeure situation, there will always be homemade delicious dishes at home that will certainly save the situation.
And if you have prepared more food than your family can eat, then you shouldn’t wait for the cutlets or soup to sit in the refrigerator for a week and be fed to a barn cat or, even worse, go in the trash. Freeze some of the prepared food, and in the future, when there is no energy, time or desire left to prepare lunch or dinner, frozen food will save a hungry family, and the family budget will not suffer from buying store-bought sausages, dumplings and other unhealthy food.
There are no vitamins in frozen foods - a myth
Vitamins are destroyed during any storage and during any processing of products, and most of them are destroyed not during freezing, but during heat treatment.
If we compare frozen vegetables and fruits with fresh ones collected in season, then naturally there will be more vitamins in fresh products.
But if in winter you want to enjoy strawberries or cherries, zucchini or bell peppers, then it is better to give preference to frozen vegetables rather than those just bought in the store. As a rule, fresh vegetables and fruits are frozen in season, that is, collected at the peak of their ripeness, when the amount of vitamins and other useful substances is high.
Therefore, the benefits from such frozen products will be greater than from glossy greenhouse vegetables and fruits grown under artificial lighting using stimulants and other substances that promote rapid ripening of products. Even canned foods are not as healthy as frozen ones.
You can freeze any food and ready-made meals - a myth
Yes, almost everything can be frozen. However, there are a number of foods that are not advisable to freeze. This applies to watery vegetables such as cucumber and radish (after defrosting, they lose their characteristic crunch and elasticity). Also, delicate greens such as lettuce cannot be frozen.
As for ready-made dishes, there are some nuances here too. Creamy sauces, dairy dishes (creams, desserts), cream, sour cream and kefir do not tolerate freezing well and separate after defrosting. This also applies to cold soups (okroshka, gazpacho) - such soups will be tasteless: the liquid part will become inhomogeneous, and their ingredients will no longer have a crunch.
Frozen food spoils when stored for a long time - true
In fact, nothing can preserve and preserve food forever, not even freezing.
Freezing allows you to preserve the high quality of products for a very long time (for example, up to 12 months). Therefore, it is very important to adhere to a certain temperature regime in the freezer, namely minus 18 degrees and below. If the temperature is higher, the shelf life of the product will be greatly reduced, since freezing does not stop, but only slows down the processes that cause food to spoil under normal conditions, and temperatures above minus 18 degrees are not enough for long-term storage of food - the food will continue to deteriorate due to for the active reproduction of microorganisms that are present on products.
Food absorbs odors in the freezer - truth and myth
Yes, this really happens. If you store fish, milk, strawberries and mushrooms in one freezer drawer, then after some time of storage together you will have mushroom-flavored strawberries and fishy-flavored milk 
But in reality this is very easy to avoid. You just need to pack the products well, sort them into groups and allocate a separate place for them.
In a refrigerator with a standard 3-compartment freezer, it is advisable to have a separate drawer for each food group. For example, in the first compartment (1) store meat products and their semi-finished products (dumplings, dumplings, cutlets, meatballs, cabbage rolls, etc.), broth, soup, sauces, etc.
Store vegetables, fruits, dairy products (milk, butter), baked goods, etc. in the second (2) compartment.
The third (3) compartment is reserved for frozen mushrooms, fish, seafood and other things.
You can defrost food in any way - a myth
The best way to defrost food is to defrost it slowly! That is, put it on the refrigerator shelf and let it thaw completely or partially.
Defrosting food under running hot or warm water is not right!
Warm water will quickly defrost the top layers of the product, while the inside will still be frozen. Such uneven defrosting has a very bad effect on the final quality and taste of the product. It will be heterogeneous and may even partially collapse.
You should also not leave frozen food on the table at room temperature.
When defrosting something (meat, fish, semi-finished products, etc.) in the air, there is a chance that the top layer of the product will become spoiled, since the process of bacteria and microbes will begin to multiply on it.
Cooking broth from frozen meat or stewing a frozen piece of meat/fish is also wrong.
It is highly undesirable to subject frozen meat to heat treatment, including cooking. This is due to the fact that after such a cooking process very few useful substances remain in the meat, it significantly decreases in size, becomes dry, and the broth becomes cloudy.
Defrosting some foods in the microwave is also undesirable.
This applies to fish and seafood. Such foods cook quite quickly and the cooking process can begin. The proteins of the outer layer of the product will coagulate, and with further heat treatment, the taste, color, density and even the composition of nutrients in the dish can change greatly.
To eat or not to eat frozen foods is the choice of each person
To freeze or not to freeze foods, to eat them or to abstain is everyone’s choice. But where is the confidence that the dishes purchased or ordered in stores, cafes and restaurants were not prepared from frozen foods? After all, almost everything can be frozen. This is the most common way to deliver products to the consumer without loss of taste characteristics and preserve them for a longer period.
Therefore, when buying/ordering confectionery products in stores or restaurants, one can fully assume that the layers and berry layers in cakes and pies, pastries and buns have been frozen.
The same applies to ready-made food. Dough (bread or puff pastry), pasta, mushroom and other pates, milk and butter, chops or steaks, pancakes filled with cheesecakes - all this also tolerates freezing well without loss of taste. And this is in addition to vegetables, fruits, meat and fish.
Don't be afraid to freeze foods and prepared meals! Freezing is the best way to store food.
If you ALWAYS have HOMEMADE food ready in your freezer, then you won't need to cook as often. I’ll say more, you may not go near the stove for days or even weeks!
If now, during the season of inexpensive vegetables, fruits, and berries, you freeze them, you can save a lot, because in winter, fresh vegetables and fruits will cost as much as a Boeing wing.
