New Freezer

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Buy larger packs of meat/get lots from the butcher and divide them up into individual meal portions as soon as you get home. That way, you can defrost them quicker - and you don't have to defrost an entire pack at once.

I do the same with whole chickens - they get jointed and put in individual packs, so you have chicken breast in one bag, legs in another. If you have enough room, this soon adds up to a considerable saving compared to buying individual cuts of meat - each chicken breast basically pays for itself these days, compared to buying them separately.


As it's just me here, I've just finished weighing out and bagging up 100g/4 oz portions of lamb mince that were reduced yesterday, they are, as piglet says, always labelled very clearly to avoid the 'oh, this pork tastes a bit like lamb' evenings.



I prefer to freeze the raw ingredients than cook it all up, as I find it's a bit too restrictive - I can be glaring in there thinking 'but I don't want any of those' if I make something in advance. But I will freeze leftovers if I'm not particularly hungry, these will often be enough for a second lighter meal.



The other things in my admittedly tiny freezer are fruit for smoothies (as I can't believe the cost of soft fruit in punnets), portions of fish and prawns, a lump of fresh ginger (grate straight into the pan/glass of hot water for ginger tea and you'll never notice it was frozen) -

and various seafood delicacies from the Chinese Supermarket.



I don't, as I see it, 'waste' my limited freezer space with processed stuff - but, then again, if I were to be suddenly fixated upon having Birds Eye Potato Waffles, I do only have to walk round the corner at any time between 6am and 11pm to find several stores open. If I lived further away, I might have considered it.



ETA: Oh - and I use separate bags, occasionally dividing portions up with the help of some plastic clips from IKEA, as boxes take up too much space and cling film tends to embed itself into the products.

Sequeena

I have about 10kg of white fish fillets in mine along with other meat.

Seakay

Pitlanepiglet wrote: »

Oh another thought....the dangers of mystery meat.

When you put something in the freezer, you will be absolutely convinced that you will know what it is in the future. Except you won't. You will find yourself with a layer of "stuff" that you have no idea what it is! Label EVERYTHING, preferably more than once, with a sharpie pen and a stick on label no matter that you're just putting it in for a few days and you are sure you'll remember what it is. You'll thank me for it in the end.....:rotfl:

I got some magnetic labels from BettterBuy - the flexible sort so v light - and a wipeable marker pen and I write each item for the freezer on a label and stick the label on the outside of the freezer in a place which signifies where it is.
My freezer has three drawers so I have three areas which = the drawers and so I at least know which drawer everything is in. It would work for a chest freezer too
When item removed from the freezer label taken off and stuck in the spares area ready to be wiped and reused
Bit of "belt and braces" in case label on item falls off or gets wiped accidentally

Pitlanepiglet

I'd love to be that organised Seakay but in reality I know that I'm going to rummage through the freezer looking for something and shuffle it all around and if I don't then OH will - it's taken me years to get him to label things.

Neither of us are good at recording what we've used etc, I'm always impressed by those who keep stock lists but I know that I wouldn't bother to update one. What I'd really like is a bar coded system and the ability to print bar codes, that would be fab!

esmf73

When my big freezer is defrosted, if its working properly I plan to refill it with ys bread, milk and then I will label, label, label everything. Planning on doing a lot of batch cooking xx

Seanymph

I freeze a lot of homemade soup in bags.

Otherwise the others are all about there for me - any on offer or cut down meat and joints mostly because that's so expensive.

Vegetarian quorn (because that isn't).

ice cream for emergency desserts.

pizza's for when i get caught at work and the teens are hungry.

bacon. Packets of 'pieces' and also packets of 'slices'.

This_Year

We freeze everything. Large packs of meat broken down into portion sizes, batch cooked meals (shepherds pie etc - but remember when the dish is in the freezer you'll be looking for it in the cupboard!) vegetable purees (whoopsied veg which we use as a soup base, make it up with stock/liquid at run time) frozen pastry, frozen veg, bread, cheese, butter - you name it, it's in there.

Label and keep a list of what you've got in there. And update the list every time you remove something! I know we have 5 x 400g packs of cheddar in there but can we find them? And we would have noticed eating that amount of cheese. I know.

It's handy for an emergency "need a glass of wine but there's none chilled" moment - just do not forget it's there and don't leave it in there too long. A wine popsicle is not what you're after.

We now need another freezer. First one's full.

Pitlanepiglet

Cake! I do what I'm doing today which is batch cooking traybake cakes in different flavours and toppings, then I cut them into individual pieces, open freeze on a baking tray and bag up into mixed bags. I can then take out a piece at a time for a lunchbox or a selection if we have visitors.

This works for me as I work full time and don't get much time or enthusiasm to bake very often so if I do enough to last a month or more then we have enough to keep us going.

24MKshopper

My chest freezer is full of Lid weekend offers and reduced bakery items. Btw my other half bought me a blender/mixer for valentines day!!! lol.

krlyr

Pitlanepiglet wrote: »

Frozen onions are useful - I haven't done any for ages but I used to buy a batch of onions and blitz them in the food processor before freezing - much cheaper than buying them frozen.

What a fab idea! What attachment do you blitz them on? I used to buy the frozen bags but last time decided to have a marathon onion-chop to freeze. OH much prefers our onion to the pre-frozen stuff but I wasn't looking forward to chopping up the next batch. Didn't think of using the food processor at all!

OP, you might want to invest in some freezable containers if you're going to batchcook, to avoid the problem of running out of containers. I bought about 100 plastic takeaway-type containers off Ebay and they're invaluable, they fit about a 2-person-portion in each (you can buy larger ones too, we have a few from takeaways that we washed and reuse) and great for building a stash of meal building blocks.100 might be overkill but they weren't that pricey and it means I can bin them as they break (dropping them onto their corner usually does a bit of damage, whoops) without worrying about running out.
So for example, at the minute I have bolognese and chili simmering on the hob - from those I expect to fill about 10 takeaway tubs, so 10 dinners for the pair of us. I'll then microwave straight from the freezer in the takeaway tubs, and either either cook fresh pasta, assemble a lasagne with fresh HM white sauce and pasta sheets (left in raw, they don't require pre-cooking), microwave a frozen portion of rice, serve on a jacket potato, etc. - all very easy meals.
Also a bonus of plastic tubs (although not oven-proof - though I find once frozen you can just pop out the block of meat into an oven-proof dish) is that you can write on them with a Sharpie - the pen will wash off when you clean up but generally won't rub off in the freezer.

My chest freezer is half filled with dog food (raw meat diet) but the other half is similar to as posted - HM meals, frozen veg, the odd supermarket pizza (though a few frozen bases in there as I've started making my own), reduced cuts of meat I've grabbed and chucked in the freezer to worry about at a later date, a loaf or two of bread, etc. - plus if I only use half a carton of passata I might chuck the rest in the freezer for next time, if I make stuffing balls I'll make a whole batch and freeze the excess, basically if I make something I generally make a whole batch and freeze extra to save time and effort next time