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09.27.2004

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freeze! how to make the most of your freezer | 1 2 3
continued from page 1

FIY: freeze-it-yourself!
Your freezer is also a handy-dandy tool for preserving the best of a season's bounty for use later in the year. Stock up on the following whenever you see them on sale, then freeze them up for future use…

fruit: Cut up fruit into chunks, and freeze the chunks individually on a baking sheet, so you don't end up with a gargantuan single mass. When the chunks are solid, they can be tossed into a plastic baggie. Frozen fruit is great to have on hand as it can be dumped in as is for making smoothies and dessert fillings and toppings. Some folks don't like to freeze bananas, as the texture changes a bit, but for smoothies and baking, I think the texture change (it gets a little chewy-gooey) is fine.
herbs: Wash and dry your fave fresh herbs, then freeze whole. They're good as fresh for about 6 months; after that, they begin to lose their potency.
boneless chicken breast: I buy the big family-size packs, them divide them up, sealing 1-2 breasts in a single freezer baggie. I try to freeze the chicken so that it's as flat as possible; if you let it bunch up, it freezes as a big thick ball, which means it takes quite a bit longer to defrost.
ground turkey: Ground turkey's a lot less fatty than pork or beef, and personally, I think it tastes just fine. I basically use it in any recipe that traditionally calls for minced beef or pork - Chinese dumplings, meat sauce for spaghetti, whatever. As with the chicken, I divide up the meat into smaller portions before freezing.

go with the pack
No matter what you're throwing in the freezer, make absolutely sure to pack it properly. It's a good idea to spring for the pricier freezer-friendly plastic bags and wrap, which really do make a difference in ensuring that your frozen goods taste as good as possible. Freezer-friendly wraps and baggies are generally heavier duty, which means they'll be better at keeping the right flavors from seeping out, and the wrong ones from infiltrating.

In addition to keeping different dishes from taking on each other's flavors, proper packaging also makes freezer-burn less likely. What, you might ask, is freezer-burn? It's what happens when the food you toss in the freezer starts to dry out, and generally results in weird discolored spots of the surface of the food. If the freezer-burn isn't too bad, you can often just trim away the yucky bits. Freezer-burnt foods won't kill you, but they'll be pretty unappetizing.

When you're freezing solid foods, wrap tightly. If you're using plastic wrap, make sure there's no air between the wrap and the top of the food; if you're using baggies, squeeze out as much of the air from the plastic baggie as you can. With liquids, on the other hand, there's a slightly different method required. Liquids expand as they freeze, so it's important to leave a bit of room at the top of your container to account for this.

freezing your own meals
One of my favorite things I when was a kid was when my family would go up to our New Hampshire condo, and my mother would decide to take a vacation from cooking. Don't get me wrong: my mother's always been a phenomenally good cook, and even as a finicky kid, I knew how lucky I was to reap the benefit of her culinary talents. But on those trips, my parents would take us to the dinky local supermarket, whereupon they'd set my brothers and me loose to choose our very own individual frozen dinners. As a ten-year-old whose meals were generally dictated by whatever mom felt like cooking for the evening, this seemed like the ultimate treat: having the luxury to eat whatever I wanted, even if that something was as lowly as a chicken pot pie or Stouffer's mac-and-cheese. So maybe that's why I still have a little soft spot for frozen dinners. These days, however, my standards are a tad more demanding. Which is why making my own homemade freezer meals is a much better way to go.

sidle on folks!

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