Diane and I use our freezer quite a bit. There’s always pizza ready to be warmed up and devoured! Diane freezes plenty of chicken and turkey for use in her various recipes. But Ashley Christensen and Kaitlyn Goalen take freezing to a whole new level!
Christensen and Goalen believe the freezer is an underutilized appliance and with proper planning, meals can be more delicious and prep time can be reduced drastically.
This cookbook starts out with the basics: how to use your freezer, what to freeze and what NOT to freeze, and other important issues. Then the recipes start with attractive photos of the wonderful food that results from using the freezing strategy. YUMMY!
I liked the variety of recipes in this book: some for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. These cooks accentuate the simplifying of food preparation as well as the value of quality ingredients to enhance the taste. If you want to learn how to make your cooking life easier, and prepare more delicious food, It’s Always Freezer Season will show you how. What’s in your freezer? GRADE: A
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Why the freezer? 1
How to use this book 5
Recipes Organized By Course 6
Part 1 How to Use Your Freezer 9
1 What to freeze and what not to freeze 11
2 How long can I freeze it? 21
Frozen Food Lifespan 24
3 How to freeze 27
4 How to unfreeze 39
Part 2 The Freeze Pantry 47
5 Grains 49
6 Proteins 81
7 Dairy 111
8 Vegetables 133
Part 3 Freezer-Friendly Dishes 165
9 Breakfast and brunch dishes 167
10 Snacks and bites 181
11 Soups and saucy things 189
12 Casseroles and bakes 209
13 Sweets 223
14 Beverages 237
Resources 253
Acknowledgments 255
About the authors 257
Index 258
At the moment, vegetables and mushrooms, samosas, ice cream (dietetic for me, Ben And Jerry’s for Alice), mac and cheese and broccoli, and beef and macaroni (for Alice) and frozen fruit I put in her smoothies or warm up and eat on my waffles 9also in freezer).
Todd, Diane insists on making her own waffles, but I have no problem with frozen waffles from time to time…although I prefer pancakes.
In our small freezer are the basics: frozen fruit, vegetables, and bread (it takes 15 seconds in the microwave to defrost a slice of bread). Our big standalone freezer is generally packed with meat and fish. When any type/cuts of meat are on sale, we usually stock up, so we usually have ribs, pork loins and tenderloins, whole chickens and chicken parts, steaks, roasts, lamb, and more “exotic” things like ox tails and goat. John’s the grill-meister and is always on the hunt for new marinades and rubs to try. And with the Instant Pot, even a tough cut of meat can be made tender. Of course, the offset to having a freezer full of meat is when we have power outages (mostly weather-related), you can lose hundreds of dollars worth of meat. After Hurricane Ida last year, John grilled a massive amount of what we had in the freezer and then we put out a call to friends and neighbors to come fix themselves a plate. So much better than seeing everything go to waste.
I very rarely have any leftovers to freeze (and I learned long ago not to freeze anything containing potatoes or rice—the defrosted results will not be pretty). In out home, dinner leftovers are going to be next day’s lunch. Once in a while, I might freeze soup if I make a lot of it. One trick I picked up years ago (before it came in a squeezable tube) was to freeze tomato paste in ice cube trays and then transfer the cubes to a baggie and keep them in the freezer—the perfect size of tomato paste to add to soups, stews, sauces, etc.
Deb, we have two refrigerators, one in the kitchen and other one in our basement. Diane stocks the kitchen fridge with the basics found in your freezer. The basement fridge freezer holds extra ice cream, sale items from various stores, and meat.
My leftovers are also next day’s lunch. I also don’t bring home leftover food from restaurants. Phil’s rule, having worked in his father luncheonette. Any food prepared in a restaurant that has sat on your table and is then carried home has been unrefrigerated too long. This book looks like it is for someone willing to spend a lot of time preparing food. When it is just one of you, you end up broiling/baking a piece of fish, some asparagus and a quick salad most nights.
Patti, Diane usually plans meals for an entire week. The kitchen refrigerator holds all the ingredients for the meals on her weekly menu. We used to eat out once a week, but with the Pandemic, that went away. We do Take-Out every other week or so. Diane enjoys cooking and baking so there’s always something going on in the kitchen! I totally agree with Phil on the “Don’t Take Home Leftover Food From Restaurants.” Plenty of our friends have fall prey to the consequences of that action!
Jackie plans meals for a week or two at a time too, but with her it is which restaurnt are we going to next! Of course, that is down here. At home we have been eating home a lot more lately. She said tomato sauce is also usually in the freezer.
Jeff, we are planning on eating out on Valentine’s Day. The Western NY numbers are falling.
What’s in our freezer? Muffins, breads (including English muffins and bialys), ice cream, cookies. At home, the same plus usually crab cakes, salmon burgers, maybe chicken, frozen corn, leftover pizza.
Jeff, leftover pizza–most of made by either me or Diane–is a staple in our freezer!
An unwary traveler!
Bob, it’s not the age, it’s the miles.
The book sounds interesting.
We have the usual refrigerator-freezer in the kitchen plus a full sized upright freezer in the garage. The house freezer has items we routinely use, such as bread, veggies, small containers of homemade soups and stews, etc. in the big garage freezer we have meat, fish, frozen casseroles, ice cream, butter/Smart Balance backups, pies, cookies, etc.
Rick, the freezers came in handy during the Pandemic. Diane and I would go shopping during “Senior Citizen Hour” at our local grocery store and buy enough food for the week. And, given the occasional shortages, we’d buy more of some meets when they were available and freeze them.
Just put a hold on this at the library. Thanks.
Rick, I think you and Barbara will find plenty of helpful tips in IT’S ALWAYS FREEZER SEASON!
I’m that rare American who still enjoys leftovers and I never cook anything that I can’t get at least four servings out of so my freezer is always packed. I enjoy cooking but I balance that with a steady rotation of meal portions from the past six weeks which works out great. Having discovered how easy it is to make better pizza than anything one can order out for (fennel is a surprisingly tasty topping) I also always keep small bowls of Mariana sauce and several balls of pizza dough on hand.
Byron, you would fit right into our household! We have leftover pizza (that we made) in our freezer. We have Mariana sauce and frozen pizza dough balls as staples. Love fennel!
Why was my first thought, “How to freeze a body?” 🙂 My favorite thing is leftovers. I love to cook way too much and freeze the rest. Our freezer is too small to hold much, though.
Angela, we have two refrigerators and both freezers aren’t large…but it’s just the two of us so it works.