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Freezer cooking such as freezing green beans and freezing foods from your home garden keeps grocery costs down.
Freezer Cooking
Freezer cooking is the brilliant practice of consolidating cooking work into the most condensed form possible, allowing meals to be prepared in astonishingly short amounts of time. By freezing foods that are already halfway to a meal, you can get complex homemade dinners on the table in a much shorter time than you could making them from scratch on the day you plan to serve the meal. Your freezer is invaluable when you get a catch of perishables that cannot be used up quickly. Fish is a wonderful food to get at the dock of the bay if you can. Check out Freezing Fish, and this families adventure in Canning 300 Pounds of Fish in one day! You can do the same using your freezer. Usually, freezer cooking entails one day full of cooking and preparing items for the freezer for the rest of the month. While you will certainly lose one day, you will gain hours every day you use your freezer foods.
There are also benefits to freezing foods that do not form whole meals. Freezing Vegetables, in particular, is a great alternative to canning. Freezing Green Beans from the garden, for example, is often more appealing than canning the beans because it is far faster and does not require you buy jars, lids and rings and haul out the water bath canners. Just get some heavy duty zip freezer bags for the job. Another great idea is to freeze fruits to use later in pies. Freezing Green Beans
Green beans are easy to grow in the garden, and you can end up with quite a harvest. What can you do to save them all? Well, freezing green beans keeps them around all year long. Frozen green beans can last over a year when prepared correctly. To freeze green beans, clean the beans with cool water and cut off the ends. Then, put them in boiling water and blanch for three minutes. Quickly remove the green beans and dip them in ice water for an additional three minutes, then drain and put them in a ziplock bag. Try to get all the air out of the bag if you can, and then your green beans are ready for the freezer! Freezing Vegetables
Freezing vegetables of any sort can be just as easy as freezing green beans. Most vegetables are blanched before freezing, and all for different times. Broccoli, for instance, should be boiled for two minutes, whereas artichokes should be boiled for seven. Knowing the proper preparation for the specific vegetable can help the foods taste better when you use them. Preparing meals for the freezer often involves a lot of pasta sauces and heavy, meaty items. These hold up very well in a freezer, but they need vegetables to keep them healthy. One of the best ways to use your frozen vegetables and cuts of roast is to make Crockpot Stew tonight! It is not always possible to make Inexpensive Meals if fresh produce is out of season, so if you didn't or could'nt plant a garden this year, shop your nearest CSA so you will have lots of vegetables available in the freezer year round. More importantly, you can choose the quality and mix of the frozen vegetables you make, where the ones you buy in the store you have little control over. For example, you could have mushrooms, watercress, green onions, celery and peppers for an Asian stir fry blend, and a Normandy blend of frozen cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, yellow squash and zucchini for other dishes. Better yet, when you grow your own or belong to a Community Supported Agriculture group, you know what’s been done to grow the foods you eat, and you’re on your way to healthier living. Freezing Foods
Besides keeping food fresh longer, freezing foods also saves energy. Freezer cooking occupies the maximum amount of space possible in the freezer, which helps you Cut Energy Costs. And, even more important, it works to keep human costs low by reducing overall work. Freezing vegetables is easy, but freezing whole meals seems like it takes a lot of work to prepare. Here’s one easy way you can figure out if it’s worth it: time yourself. Time yourself preparing meals normally this month, then next month try freezer cooking. Factor in the time you would save with some experience, and you’re sure to see how economical freezer cooking can be. So many foods freeze really well. Just think of how much you pay for breads at the store. French loafs, bagels, sandwich bread, rolls, muffins, fruit and nut breads- we all eat bread. Just take 1/2 of a day and learn How to Make Dough from cheap yeast, flour and water. Wrap and freeze them and stop paying at the store for bakery goods. Freezer Cooking to Family Security through Frugal Living Freezer Cooking to Best Soul Food Recipes |
