Frozen food: expert tips on how to get the best out of your freezer
Kate Hall, the home cooking consultant behind the Full Freezer website, tries to help people get the best out of their freezer, whether that is preserving leftovers or buying frozen in the shops.
At the outset she suggests people keep a notepad beside their food waste or compost bin to keep track of what is being thrown away. This helps identify foods where you could be buying less, Hall says: “Are we just buying things on autopilot that we could take off the shopping list?”
Although Hall’s focus is on avoiding waste rather than buying frozen food per se, she has considered the price differential when it comes to fruit and veg. She found that the rule of thumb is that the more processing is involved, the more expensive it is.
“You can get a pineapple for £1 but if you buy frozen, it is about £5 for 1kg,” she says. “On the flipside, blueberries are about £10 per 1kg fresh but £6 or £7 frozen.”
However, buying frozen veg that costs more than the fresh version – such as chopped onions – may still make sense.
“If somebody is wasting a lot of food when they buy fresh, it might still work out cheaper to buy frozen,” she says.
Hall has lots of ideas on how to prevent food ending up in the bin. “Potatoes are a big, big one,” she says. “We waste 4.4m potatoes every day in the UK.
“You can’t just pop them in the freezer, which is a pain, but you can bake them all at once, then freeze them. They can be reheated in the microwave or made into mash. I freeze mash flat in freezer bags so it’s very quick to defrost and reheat.”
She adds: “Carrots are another one. My favourite thing is to grate them and freeze in a thin layer. Then they can be used to bulk out meals such as bolognese.”
It doesn’t stop there. “Fruits such as bananas can be frozen
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