Franklin County

   October/November 2008
 

Freezing Casseroles, Soups, or Holiday Foods

Foods for packed lunches or elaborate dinners can be kept in the freezer ready for busy days, parties, or unexpected company.

Reduce stress during the holidays by stashing casseroles, main dishes, baked goods and desserts in your freezer. Double family favorites when preparing meals. Eat once, and freeze a portion for an easy hot meal on a hectic day. Home-prepared entrees can also have a nutritional advantage, if prepared with less fat, salt, and preservatives than commercial products.

Advantages.  Freezing offers the convenience, as well as efficient use of your oven by baking more than one dish at a time. Freezing leftovers prevents waste, and creates opportunity for “planned-overs.” Special diet foods can be prepared in quantity and frozen in single portions. Doubling or tripling recipes and freezing the extra food saves kitchen time. Freeze     individual portions of an ordinary recipe for later use.

However, freezing and reheating uses more energy than cooking from scratch and serving immediately. In addition, some products do not freeze well, while others do not justify the labor and expense of freezing.

Freeze only high quality products. Freezing will not improve the texture, flavor, or quality of food.

Cool. Quickly cool the foods you plan to freeze after cooking to keep them safe.

Package. Pack foods only in amounts used at one time. Use moisture-vapor resistant packaging to prevent freezer burn. Air shortens shelf life and affects food color, flavor and texture in undesirable ways. Fill any empty space in a plastic freezer carton with crumpled freezer paper.  

For packaging foods, choose coated or laminated freezer papers, plastic wraps or bags, wide mouth freezer jars, freezer boxes, or heavy-duty aluminum foil. Avoid narrow-mouth jars which can break or non-moisture proof contains like milk cartons,  cottage cheese or margarine containers which do not produce seals airtight enough for freezing.

Label. Clearly label each package with the name of the food, packaging date, ingredients, special instructions, and the amount of food.

Freeze. Place the food in the coldest part of the freezer as soon as it is packaged and sealed. Store at 0°F or below. For quickest freezing, place the packages against the refrigerated surfaces of the freezer. Spread the warm packages out around the freezer. Once frozen, stack the packages close together. Freeze only the amount of food that will freeze within 24 hours. This is usually two to three pounds of food per cubic foot of freezer space.

Post a list of the frozen foods with freezing dates near the freezer and check the packages off the list as they are removed.

Keep in mind not all foods freeze well. See the chart on page three for foods that do not freeze well.

Thawing. Thaw frozen foods containing fish, meat, eggs or other high protein ingredients in the refrigerator or microwave. Do not allow these potentially hazardous foods to stay in the temperature danger zone (40⁰F-140⁰F) for more than 2 hours. Breads, cakes and cookies that are precooked may be thawed at room temperature. Reheat all prepared foods, except non-meat baked goods, sweets and fruits to at least 165⁰F quickly, within 2 hours.

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		University of Missouri Extension Franklin County Site maintained by: Billie Jo Brenner, brennerbj@missouri.edu Last revised: 07/02/08