Re - Stocking Freezer

Paige

I have just been to the supermarket and restocked my freezer mostly with meat and fish. It is a 4 drawer freezer, so not huge. I have spent £145 and its not even full.

I dont know whats the best thing to do, just buy food when its needed - so keep the freezer almost empty, fill it up every 6 weeks, or just keep a small stock in it.

When I try and use store cupboard ingrediants to make meals and not spend much on shopping if I am short of money, it then costs a fortune to replenish everything. Is it best just to keep every thing ticking over by replacing food every week ?

What does everyone else do. ?

Bargain_Rzl

In my view, there are far more efficient and cost-effective ways of using a freezer than your current method

Such as:

1) buying meat reduced to clear and keeping it until needed
2) cooking in bulk and freezing the remainder in portions
3) buying in bulk (for example, a side of pork or whatever) and keeping until needed.

I would never shop the way you do (i.e. setting out to "fill the freezer") because then I wouldn't have room for all the ad-hoc yellow stickered stuff I pick up, which saves me a fortune in the long run. At the moment, I know that even if my freezer is full, if I go into Asda and find loads of meat reduced 75% off, all I need to do to make space for it is remove portions of home-made "ready meals" to do me for the next couple of days.

I do have a few staple frozen items I like to have in the freezer at all times (frozen peas, ice cubes etc) but other than that I use my freezer as it's required - and it's always pretty full (it's more electrically efficient when it's full, too )

ashbart

Hi Paige - I agree with the above post in terms of bulk cooking & freezing, etc however, when it comes to frozen foods bought at the supermarket, I only ever buy them when they are on special offer and that isn't necessarily all at the same time. So, for example, I may buy pizzas this week, chips next week, ice cream & fish the week after, etc. It all depends what's on offer. The only thing I buy that isn't on offer is frozen sweetcorn as we go through a lot of it and I make sure I've got 1 bag spare, just in case!

Hope this helps!

frosty

Hi,I have a large chest freezer outside in a shed and a smaller upright one in the kitchen,I buy all reduced meat,bread(10p each) and anything on offer.I bring enough in from the outside freezer to last the week.My shoppling budget is £50 a week for 6 adults.I couldnt manage it if I didnt have the freezers.Great for freezing leftovers and it means no wasted food.A few months ago I managed to buy racks of lamb at Tesco reduced from £10 down to £1.50,and stuffed chickens £4.00 down to £1,when I see things like this I stock up.

angchris

it is far more useful to stock up your freezer when you see a bargain, whats the point of stocking it up with full priced food when you can buy that pretty much anytime. i look at it this way...i make my £ work for me, if its better staying in the bank account earning interest then i don`t buy it, if i am going to save more by bulk buying a bargain then i try to buy as much as poss providing i do actually use it, if its something that will remain static in the freezer for a year then again i don`t buy it (or try not to ) if for eg i stumbled across a stack of pizzas reduced to 50p i`d buy the lot, im selfish when it comes to bargains and its every man for himself at the reduced counter :rotfl: i then feed my family on a selection of what i might have in the freezer at that particular time, there is no set menu as such as the whoopsies change everytime i go shopping, mealtimes can be *cough* "interesting" sometimes in this house and i can make allsorts of edible concuctions up but it keeps my food bills right down low, last month i fed 2 adults 1 teenager + 1 rottweiler on £110 relying mostly on the freezer.