A Fully Stocked Kitchen [Part Three- Freezer]

We've discussed what I keep on hand in my pantry or cupboards and what I have on hand in my refrigerator. In order to be fully prepared to cook a healthy, home-cooked meal most every night of the week, your freezer should also be full of things that you'd like to have on hand, but require longer term storage than your fridge items. Back in the day, our Grandmas and Great- Grandmas didn't have the luxury of the freezer to keep foods - they took a trip to the market each and every day to get the foods for the day - or in some cases, they raised it themselves and in other cases waited for the traveling vegetable man or meat seller to come by the house for them to pick up some items. These days, we have, at our disposal, the best of all worlds. You can grow your own food, and if you have a particularly green thumb, and have an abundance, you can use your freezer to preserve that bounty. You can pick up foods from the local farmers' markets or CSA's and do the same. You can, in some areas, still have groceries delivered to your home.  The freezer is also a great place to freeze full meals that you prepare yourself to be eaten at a later date, or even just prepared components that can be put together on the fly to make a full dinner a bit easier. Just like the pantry and the fridge, if you keep your house stocked with the good stuff, you'll have an easier time actually eating the good stuff.

Notes: 
In the freezer, contact with air is the devil, causing frosty ice crystals that eventually cause freezer burn. If you invest in a vacuum sealer food storage unit (Food Saver is one brand), you can purchase large family sized packages of meats, etc and portion them out to be sealed and stored in the freezer. 
Also, a full freezer is an efficient freezer - be organized so that your freezer doesn't end up being an archeological site. If you pack that thing full, and then never use anything out of it, you've defeated the purpose.

Freezer Essentials

• Meat the Press - obviously, this will depend upon what your family eats. The cuts represented here are just a sample of what you could have on hand. Does your family like ribs? Buy them on sale and stick them in the freezer, etc.
• Beef:
• Ground beef -  portioned into 1 lb packages for taco meat, burgers, meat sauce for pasta, meat loaf, stuffed peppers
• Skirt or flank steak - use for fajitas, or marinated w/ Asian flavors, then grilled and eaten with an Asian slaw, or grilled with sweet peppers and served with braised leeks.
• Rib-eye steak (boneless) - perfect for grilling or for use in sukiyaki
• Sirloin steak- great grilled; leftovers make a nice steak sandwich or Mexican-inspired taco/wrap
• Poultry: 
• Boneless, skinless chicken breasts - portioned to 1 per person in your family -or- individually  to be marinated and grilled, sliced for a stir-fry.
• Bone-in, skin on chicken thighs - perfect to have on hand for a variety of dishes - they tend to be juicier and more flavorful than breast meat. I make a great Indian Masala with these thighs.
• 1 or 2 whole chickens - for roasted chicken (use leftovers for chicken salad or to add to tortilla soup, etc)
• Pork: 
• Italian Sweet sausage - saute and use as pizza topping; add to tomato sauce;  add to meatloaf, stuffed peppers
• Pork tenderloin- as lean as some cuts of chicken- superb grilled, or oven roasted, but I love to slice into medallions or scaloppine, pan grill and top with a pan sauce. can also be cut into strips to be used in a stir-fry
• Ham-steak - we eat this infrequently due to the high sodium content; super easy to pan fry and top with a bit of brown sugar for an easy/fast protein.
• Bacon - no explanation needed.
• Sausages:
• Andouille - this spicy cajun sausage is great in gumbo or jambalaya
• Boudin - another cajun sausage made with rice; cook, and serve with a steamed or sauteed vegetable and you have a super quick meal.
• Smoked sausage  or Bratwurst- a good choice if your family doesn't like the spice of the cajun sausages.
• Seafood: I've previously mentioned El Syd's super unusual finned fish allergy. So, we don't keep fish in the house. I purchase that as soon as he leaves town for a business trip.
• Shrimp freeze well. I prefer the Gulf Shrimp over the farm-raised. You may not have access to the Gulf Brown Shrimp. Also, farm-raised shrimp will be available in a variety of levels of processing that the Gulf Shrimp typically aren't: shell-on, shell-on easy peel (meaning they have been slit down the back and deveined) & peeled and deveined.  Peeling and deveining shrimp is not a difficult task you can do it. I promise. Whatever you do, do not purchase pre-cooked shrimp with the expectation of cooking them again. Frozen, cooked shrimp are fine for a shrimp cocktail or a shrimp salad, but not suitable for a heated preparation. If you cook them yet again, the results will be rubber-ball shrimp like things.

• All "Pro" (Produce, that is)
• Fruits- These can be things that you purchase and process yourself or things you buy from the grocery. They are great to have in the freezer for smoothies and also for other cobblers and pies.
• During peach season, here in Texas, we purchased a bushel of peaches and then processed them for freezing. I have jars of delicious peaches to use for cobbler or to add to homemade ice cream...or just defrost and eat. 
• Pineapple, berries, mango, strawberries - a small bag of each in the freezer makes smoothies a breeze; also good for fruit based salsas when it is not peak-season for fresh fruits.
• Vegetables - As you may have already figured out, I try to use fresh vegetables exclusively. That being said, there are a few frozen things that you will always find stashed in my freezer.
• Corn- sweet corn is probably one of, if not the, best frozen vegetables. Perfect to add to soups and to use to make corn pudding or creamed corn.
• Peas - fresh peas are supremely hard to come by in Texas; frozen peas are a satisfactory substitute.
• Edamame - soy beans - fabulous to add to any asian-stir fry or soup (My daughter will doctor up some ramen with a handful of these.)
• Pearl onions - for potpie or beef bourgignon or coq au vin; sure you can blanch and peel fresh pearl onions, but it is hardly worth the effort. 
• Tater Tots and French Fries (including sweet potato fries)- I feel (and maybe I'm justifying) that these baked versions are slightly more healthy than the fast food versions. We have these stashed for when we grill burgers outside and want a quick side dish.
• Tomatoes and tomato sauce - okay, technically a fruit, but I'm going to put them under vegetable since I'm thinking they typically end up in savory and not sweet dishes. Just like with the peaches, we purchased a boatload of San Marzano paste tomatoes last season. Super easy to blanch them, peel them, stick them in jars and freeze them. So, we had tomato sauce that tasted like Summer in the middle of winter. A little bit of work reaped big rewards!

• Play It Again - Pre-mades and Left-overs-
• Casseroles:  one of my biggest tips to share is to take some time on the weekend and make a double batch of something like lasagna or King Ranch Chicken. Eat one on the weekend and freeze the other for another week when you need a dinner that you can just bake and eat. Alternatively, you can make a batch or two and portion them into smaller than a full-family sized portion so that you only eat a dish one night with maybe leftovers for lunch the next day. That way, you do not feel like you're eating something all. week. long. 
• Soups - I cannot seem to make a small pot of soup. Try as I might, and I have tried. I've even started off in a very small pot thinking that would limit my volume only to find myself carefully pouring partially completed hot soup from one pot to my large soup pot in order to fit in the rest of the necessary ingredients. So, I finally gave up. Now, I make my soup. We eat it for a couple of nights and maybe a lunch and then I portion the leftovers into freezer safe containers or jars and freeze it. Just make sure when you freeze liquids that you leave enough head space since liquid expands as it freezes. Trust me, you don't want to learn that the hard way. (This is true for anything that you freeze with liquid including fruits and tomatoes, etc.) You can use these frozen soups as a nice lunch or dinner later on down the road. On occasion, I've used the soup leftovers as a sort of soup starter for the next batch when I may not have a lot of stock on hand.
• Stock - as mentioned in the pantry section, you can freeze your left over purchased stock in small amounts (many say ice cube trays) so that you can add as needed. I try to freeze one cup measures since that is a good base measure needed by many recipes. 
• Frozen stuffed pasta - I usually have 2 or 3 packages of prepared stuffed pastas like tortellini or ravioli on hand. This can go from freezer to plate in about 30 minutes. Using other pantry items it is easy to make a quick tomato or cream sauce to top it with. If you also keep some pesto in the freezer, that is also an option for topping.
• Puff Pastry and Phyllo - makes for easy appetizers and desserts. Can also be used to top a pot pie for a simple flaky crust.

• From Soup to Nuts and everything in between - recipe additions:
• Nuts - nuts have a high oil content which can cause them to turn rancid if left at room temp for an extended period of time. This high fat content also allows them to freeze beautifully with little if any change in texture or other quality. The following will pretty much cover the major requirements in most recipes. Nuts can add a nice flavor and crunch to salads and to pasta dishes. They are also integral to many baking recipes.
• pecans
• walnuts
• almonds
• hazelnuts
• pine nuts
• Prepped components: 
• chopped onions (that you prep yourself and put into small bags/containers)
• minced garlic
• sliced and sauteed mushrooms
• cheese-shredded: as mentioned in the fridge post, you're better off to buy your own cheese and shred it yourself to avoid the cornstarch and wood fiber and mold inhibitors used in commercially processed shredded cheese. I find that cheese that is frozen does have a bit of a texture change, but if you're melting it into quesadillas or some other use, it should do well enough. (Just mentioning it here for informational purposes, it isn't something I really do in practice.)

The pantry, the fridge and the freezer - the trifecta of modern food storage. Hopefully, if you're the type that is forever picking up take-out or turning to highly processed foods to cut corners when you're in a time crunch or if you're just in a rut of cooking the exact same dishes over and over based on what you always buy, this series will help you to see your kitchen in a different light and help you to stock up and be ready to cook up something great at a moment's notice.

What other areas of the kitchen would you like to review? Any interest in tools and supplies? or spices? I'd love to hear from you.

Happy Cooking!

sld

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