There were lots of great suggestions on the previous post about what you can freeze. To see the original post about what you can freeze, click here. I thought I would list them in a post. Thanks so much for all of your great tips and advice!!
Additional Foods You Can Freeze:
Carie freezes:
tomatoes, green beans, peas, pumpkin, and squash that I have grown in my garden. I use them for soups and chilis. I also freeze uncooked pasta and homemade pasta sauce. Cookies and bread are freezable too
Karen freezes:
brown rice, nuts, seeds (sunflower, chia, flax), the crumbled bits of various cereals I use to either bread something with or blend up and use as part of the flour when baking cookies, cookie dough, ginger root, garlic, tortillas, bones etc for soups/broth, extra V8 juice or salsa for soups, banana slices for smoothies, bacon. Plus, homemade enchilada sauce recently and it separates (like gravy does if frozen). Still tasted fine though.
She does not recommend freezing popcorn seeds, and has a link to why and marshmallows.
Elizabeth found a great article here from the NY Times about foods you can freeze.
Here are Joy’s tips:
This summer a friend gave us a half-bushel of tomatoes. We just dropped them whole into the blender, pureed them, then froze them in ice-cube trays. After they had completely frozen we transferred them to 1 gal freezer bags. They’re great for home-made pizza sauce and to add to store-bought sauces for a fresh taste.
Also, this might be a “no, duh” item, but we freeze meat and poultry. Recently Ingles had Tyson whole chickens for 79 cents/lb and ground chuck 1.79/lb. We bought five pounds of ground chuck and packaged them into 1lb portions to freeze, and four chickens @ less than $3.40 each!
A word of caution – our deep freeze is used for storage only, and we don’t always open it every week. My husband is a pastor and our home is connected to the church. A month or so ago we had some electrical issues in the church and didn’t know that the power to the deep freeze was effected…we ended up loosing almost $200 worth of food (chicken, beef, the last of the tomatoes, fish, bread, our whole stockpile, pretty much). So even if you don’t need anything from it, check your freezer a few times a week!
Nina freezes overripe bananas for banana bread.
Freezing Potatoes
One question a lot of people had was how to freeze potatoes. Thanks to Ali for these great directions!
You can freeze potatoes!!! The key is though is you have to cook them first. French Fries: Make your fries and bake them in the oven at 350 until they are done or about done. Season them however you want. (I use seasoned salt and salt) Be sure they are single layered so they will get done evenly. Cool them some then I transfer to another cookie sheet, single layer, and flash freeze in the freezer. When they are frozen, put in a freezer bag and put back in the freezer. When you want to use them, just place on a cookie sheet and re-heat in oven until crispy! Serve and enjoy! I have done this several times and they come out great! Also Taste of Home website and a recipe for Sunday mashed Potatoes. Awesome recipe. I make it and put in smaller foil lined baking dishes (just enough for one meal). When frozen you can take it out of the baking dish wrap completely in more foil and freeze. When your ready to have it for a meal, take out and thaw, then heat in 350 oven until hot!! The main thing to remember with potatoes is they must be cooked or mostly cooked before freezing!!
Nina freezes mashed potatoes by. . . . I’ve had great success in freezing mashed potatoes and mashed sweet potatoes! I put them in muffin tins and after they’re frozen, I pop them out and put them all in a freezer bag….I used them to make individual servings of twice baked potatoes….very yummy and they didn’t change color.
Thanks so much for all of your input!
For more budget saving tips, click here.
