What cooked foods are easy to freeze?
What are some foods that can be cooked, then frozen, and then thawed or reheated for a quick meal?
I'm not necessarily looking for specific recipes, but ideas about general food types.
1 answer
Thick stews and "mushy" foods seem like they tend to do pretty well. I've had good luck with chilies and soups (both vegetable and pasta). These can all be dumped in a bowl and microwaved for a few minutes.
It's true that ice crystals form in the meal and degrade it, but this mostly affects texture. For something like chili or vegetable stew where texture is already somewhat homogenized by boiling, it's not a huge loss. Of course, fresh will always have better texture, but when the trade off is a tasty meal that is 3 minutes away for months, it's tolerable.
"Greasy" and "sloppy" foods also do well. Butter and fat don't crystalize like water, so they don't lose as much texture. In particular, cheese freezes pretty well. Lasagna has been very successful for me - there's some movement of water and oil out of the cheese in storage, but when you heat it up a lot of it migrates back in anyway.
One trick I've found with soups and stews is to freeze them in sandwish ziploc bags. You can either hang the bag on some frame, with clips or by just folding over, or you can have someone hold it for you. Then pour in the food, squeeze out air and seal. This minimizes air movement between the food and the freezer, so new moisture can't come in and form a bunch of frost. It also prevents smells of different foods from mixing.
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