In contrast to my fridge—with its many drawers, cabinets, and condiment racks for storage—my bottom-drawer freezer features like a toy chest. It’s simple to toss one thing in, and even simpler to lose it in a jumble of bagged greens and fruits, impulse buys from Dealer Joe’s, and numerous thriller containers.
I do know I’m not the one one who treats their freezer just like the land that point forgot. Not too long ago, when a group member requested our Food52 Collective for recommendations on how you can get her freezer in form, it triggered a refrain of sympathetic complaints, and motivated me to convey order to my very own frozen abyss.
I compiled among the greatest tips, ideas, and steps I took to make my freezer useful once more, gleaned from our earlier kitchen storage reporting and our in-house specialists, the Food52 group. Listed here are the six cardinal guidelines I’ve realized to maintain your freezer from turning into a black gap.
1. Decide what’s price saving
Set a practical deadline to take away the meals that doesn’t need to take up any extra freezer house. Then be ruthless in your jettisoning.
Given the unhappy, sorry state of my freezer (hi there stray ravioli and open bag of peas!), I gave myself per week to eat what may very well be consumed. Then, I composted any freezer-burned meals and all gadgets of questionable origin. (I reside close to a web site that takes all meals waste, which turns out to be useful throughout cleansing sprees.)
2. Comprise Your Mess
Typically, you want a straightforward win to encourage you to maintain tackling a giant mission—and organizational bins will make you’re feeling like a champion.
Sure, the identical instrument that organizing professional Rachel Rosenthal makes use of to restore order to a fridge works simply as nicely in your freezer. These bins are excellent for holding the unfastened gadgets that always go lacking inside a freezer’s depths, like squares of frozen, crushed ginger, popsicles, and ice cream sandwiches (we now have a critical Chipwich behavior, and to avoid wasting house, I at all times take away individually wrapped gadgets from their bins).
Clear, plastic storage containers work greatest for upright freezers the place you’re eye degree along with your meals, however since I solely want an aerial view for my backside freezer, I bought a couple of big, aluminum loaf pans.
After a complete funding of roughly $4 and some minutes of organizing, my desserts and frozen herb cubes are actually secure and sound in these pans atop my freezer’s sliding shelf. The underside drawer under, free and away from freezer-burned meals, is now prepared for the following step: cataloging its contents.
Photograph by Nicole Davis
Photograph by Nicole Davis
3. Label The whole lot
I barely know one cellphone quantity by coronary heart—so why have I been fooling myself into pondering that I’ll recall the random Sunday afternoon after I had the time to simmer inventory for my future self?
To notice the date after I add one thing selfmade (or repackaged) to the freezer, I purchased myself freezer tape and a Sharpie, which I now hold within the kitchen junk drawer (which I promise to additionally arrange quickly). I additionally bought zip-top baggage—extra on these under—which you’ll write on straight.
For many who personal upright freezers (both on the high of their fridge, side-by-side, or standalone), you can too label your cabinets or sections by sort of meals. Food52er Paula Marchese has an upright freezer with cabinets, which “makes it a lot simpler to arrange—baked items go on one shelf, leftovers go on one shelf, animal proteins go on one other. And I’ve room to maintain my ice cream freezer bowl within the freezer all yr spherical!”
4. Make a Date With Your Frozen Stash
Frozen meals stays secure nearly indefinitely at 0 levels Fahrenheit; it’s the feel and style that degrades over time—beginning round two months for soups and one yr for an raw, complete hen. To maintain tabs on the lifespan of your meals, set a reminder in your cellphone, or pair your freezer check-ins with one other chore on the calendar, like altering out the water filter in your fridge (each six months).
Linsey Sowa, Food52 Cookbook Membership moderator and one half of the non-public chef firm, Southernish, is way more in tune together with her freezer’s contents. She and her fiancé “hold a working record of the contents taped to the entrance door. This manner nothing will get forgotten about, and it evokes us to make use of extra of what is in there for meals!”
(Scroll to the top to study precisely how lengthy your meals will hold within the freezer, and what freezes nicely.)
5. Freeze Meals In Small Parts
Freezing individually sized parts of meals is one other sensible approach that I’ve begun to embrace.
For one, it’s handy. I now divvy up that additional turkey chili or meat sauce that can be excellent for one individual’s lunch or dinner into small zip-top baggage (squeezing out the air earlier than sealing to forestall freezer burn).
However particular person parts additionally encourage you to tug meals out of your freezer extra usually. If you happen to freeze a large tub of broth however don’t have any plans to cook dinner sufficient soup to warrant defrosting it, it might by no means budge.
Everybody has their very own trick for freezing small parts for future meals—together with a couple of I unearthed from this gem of a remark thread.
One group member, mela, likes to freeze cup-size parts of inventory, then empties the “pucks” right into a gallon zip-top bag that she later washes and reuses. (Souper Cubes are one other nice technique to freeze small quantities of inventory, pesto, and sauce.)
Yet one more Food52er, tammany, cooks her mirepoix of carrots, celery, and onions in oil, cools it, then locations it in this plastic container—topped with extra oil—earlier than freezing. To make use of, she gently nukes it, scoops out the portion she wants, then refreezes.
And when group member arcane54 freezes tiny meatballs, chorizo, or different meat, she makes an indentation within the plastic freezer bag with a spoon, in order that “the frozen block will break cleanly alongside the indents. That approach I don’t need to thaw greater than I want.”
6. Freeze Flat
In “How one can Make Your Freezer Work For You”—a goldmine of concepts on how you can freeze meals to maximise your cooking—author Valerio Farris relays a key precept of freezer organizing:
“Freeze flat. It’s an effective way to avoid wasting house and reduce thaw time. Pour your liquid into an upright freezer bag, seal it almost all the way in which, then fastidiously tip the bag onto its facet, press the air out of the opening, and freeze. Stack your frozen baggage like folded sweaters, or flip them on their sides, like a report assortment.”
This sensible organizing trick runs counter, in my case, to an historical piece of recommendation: “Know Thyself.” Whereas I have begun to freeze some particular person parts of meals flat in freezer baggage, I nonetheless desire plastic takeout containers as a result of they’re extra readily reusable.
Additionally, the freeze flat technique is healthier suited towards upright freezers, the place some individuals truly use journal recordsdata to retailer their flat-frozen zip-top baggage—a degree of group for less than probably the most formidable freezer keeper.
Extra from Home52
How do you retain your freezer organized? Spill your secrets and techniques under!
