Reduce food waste and save time (and money) when cooking, by making friends with your freezer and using it for more than just frozen peas and ice cream.
Even those with a tiny freezer can chop up leftover fresh herbs, to use at a later date, saving money and reducing food waste immediately.
Those with space in their home / garden for flower pots can grow herbs in the summer and freeze them for all-year-round use. Mint and Rosemary are the two herbs I grow outside, as they survive year-in year-out, with only a bit of watering required during the very driest weeks of summer. I freeze the Rosemary as whole sprigs - I find chopping the sticky, fresh Rosemary far too fiddly. So for recipes requiring chopped Rosemary I use shop-bought dried stuff (Sainsbury's dried herbs are in glass jars with metal lids, with just an annoying plastic label and safety tag) - if possible from a re-fill store.
I also freeze shop-bought: Basil, Chives, Coriander, Parsley, Tarragon and Thyme. Asda sells most of these herbs in paper plant pots in their 'Grower's Selection Growing Herbs' range, without plastic, hurrah!
If you do decide to freeze herbs, then prepare them properly... wash them well, remove the stalks and chop the leaves finely (but not the Rosemary, freeze it as whole sprigs) - so they are ready to use in recipes. I freeze them in plastic bags (gasp!) which I've had for years and years. Reusable silicone freezer bags are available to buy from Lakeland, which I will stock up on when my existing bags are no longer fit-for-purpose.
In addition to herbs, other 'unusual things' I freeze are:
- lemon zest
- lemon slices
- lime chunks
- tikka curry paste (shop bought, usually Patak's)
- green Thai curry paste (shop bought)
- sun dried tomatoes (shop bought in a jar / pouch)
- single / double cream
- coconut milk
- sliced spring onion
- sliced celery
- chopped onions
- slow-cooker ham leftovers
- blocks of butter
- root ginger
- homemade pease pudding (pressure cooked yellow split peas served with slow-cooker ham in North East England)
These all save me time and money - half-used jars of curry paste / sundried tomatoes are no longer wasted and an unfinished pack of celery doesn't fester at the back of the fridge. If a recipe calls for lemon juice or lemon zest, I don't have to buy a lemon specially - I can just delve into the freezer (the lemon slices thaw in seconds in the microwave and yield the juice needed).
Again (as with the herbs) it is important to prepare and store the frozen items properly...
Lemon zest can just be grated and chucked into a (labelled) jar to freeze - if it clumps together you can poke it with a spoon when you are extracting some.
The lemon slices and lime chunks need 'open freezing' (spaced out on a flat baking tray in the freezer) before storing the frozen fruit in a jar - or else they just freeze in one lump which makes them unusable.
The curry pastes and the sun dried tomatoes need 'open freezing' in 1 tbsp-sized blobs in the holes of cupcake baking trays. Once frozen, the blobs of curry paste can be kept in (labelled) jars.
Freeze leftover cream and leftover coconut milk in ice cube trays / in cupcake trays (then pop the portions out and keep them in a wide-necked jar / bag in the freezer) to add to sauces,
As long as they are dry, the sliced spring onions and the sliced celery can just be thrown into a (labelled) jar each to freeze, and then poked with a spoon to loosen them, when you want to remove a certain quantity.
Ikea's 'Kafferep' ginger biscuits (which come in a big, plastic-wrapped carboard box, are the equivalent of many individual packets of wrapped biscuits, so reduce packaging waste) can be decanted into a freezer-proof tub (e.g. an old plastic Quality Street tub) and stuck straight into the freezer. The biscuits taste delicious eaten when still frozen, so are an instant tasty snack. There's no pressure to eat them all up, as they will stay fresh in the freezer for months.
Chopped onions are kept in the freezer in a big plastic bag (again, I've used the same bag for years, but I will eventually replace it with a Lakeland silicone freezer bag). I don't 'open freeze' the onions beforehand (as they would stink-out the freezer), so keeping them in a plastic bag (rather than in a tub) means they can be jostled around easily in my hands to break up any clumps.
The ham leftovers from my slow cooker recipe must be shredded into bite-size, thin pieces (to make defrosting quick and uniform) and then I 'open freeze' the ham pieces on a flat baking tray in the freezer (as shown in the image below). Open freezing stops the pieces clumping together into an unusable, solid lump. Once frozen, remove from the tray and keep in an airtight tub.
I remove just a handful of the cooked ham pieces at a time to add to a pizza or to have in a sandwich. This stops us buying heavily packaged (and pretty horrid) supermarket sliced ham and it stops us over-eating to finish up a whole packet of ham by a certain date. If you don't have a slow cooker, then Tesco does sell a nice pack of 'shredded ham hock' which needs open freezing on a flat tray before it is stored in a freezer-safe tub - because you can freeze it, you will eat far less in one go which is good news for your health and for the planet.
Blocks of chilled butter can be put straight into the freezer, then removed and thawed in the fridge overnight before you require them for baking. Sainsbury's Farmhouse Butter in greaseproof paper is the only Supermarket butter I can find which isn't in a foil/plastic mix wrapper. So I stock up on it (and freeze it for future use) whenever I shop at Sainsbury's.
Root ginger can be frozen exactly as you buy it (i.e. whole), no need to peel or chop it - just finely grate the frozen lump of root ginger, skin-and-all when a recipe asks for it. l I keep the lump of frozen root ginger in a wide-necked, labelled jam jar.
I'm sure there are many more less-than-ordinary ingredients which can be frozen - I'm always open to suggestions...
On that note, thank you so much for the following suggestions by my blog readers:
- freeze leftover cooked meat juices in an ice cube tray (then pop the cubes out and keep them in a wide-necked jar / bag in the freezer) to add to soups / sauces / gravy,
- freeze leftover wine in an ice cube tray (then pop the cubes out and keep them in a wide-necked jar / bag in the freezer) to add to sauces,
- open freeze (well washed and dried) raspberries / blackberries / blueberries (NOT strawberries as they go watery) on a tray, then store them in a freezer-safe tub, to add to porridge / smoothies / yoghurt,
- blend natural yoghurt with frozen berries and then freeze in a tub, to give you frozen fruity yoghurt,
- blend excess cream with frozen berries and then freeze in a tub, to give you fruity frozen (ice) cream,
- grate HARD / SEMI-HARD cheeses (e.g. cheddar, parmesan, raclette) and keep in a sealed bag in the freezer (so you can crumple the bag to break up any clumps, meaning you can get out just what you need). In addition, you can grate mozzarella and crumble feta before freezing.
Please remember that frozen food doesn't remain fresh and edible forever. This Good Housekeeping guide is a useful overview showing recommended freezer storage times. So freeze away to your heart's content (but do use up what you freeze before the labels get so old that they fall off!)