**Basics of freezing
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This isn't the complete book of freezing everything,
nor how to turn your life around using nothing but
your freezer. There are whole books on that. This is
just a few basic guidelines for freezing leftover
dishes and leftover ingredients, with the aim of using
them up within a month or so.
• Have a plan. Don't just toss food into the freezer
with no particular plan to use it. Before you can say
"Wasn't there some leftover chili?" it will work its
way to the back and be lost forever.
• Make a list, check it twice. To get into a
leftover-using frame of mind, keep a list of dishes
and ingredients you have frozen. Stick it on the
freezer door with a magnet and cross things off when
you use them. The list can remind you, when you're
thinking about what to make, that you have three
portions of chili and a chicken breast in there.
• It's a wrap. Before freezing food, wrap it well. Use
freezer paper or, even easier, seal it in freezer
bags, which are thicker than regular plastic bags.
Expel as much air as possible from the bag before
sealing it to minimize dehydration (called "freezer
burn"). If possible, to speed both freezing and
thawing, freeze food in thin, flat shapes rather than
in thick, chunky shapes.
• Date the food. Clearly mark it either on the list or
the wrapped or bagged food so you won't be surprised
by a five-year-old steak that is hopelessly
dehydrated.
• Don't be nervous about freezing. Most foods freeze
just fine if wrapped well and not left in there
forever. At the worst, freezing might damage the
texture of something fragile, and some foods can
develop off-flavors if left in the freezer too long,
but freezing food doesn't make it dangerous.
If there's some question about whether what you have
will freeze nicely, assume it will, but have some
backup the first time you attempt to serve the
leftovers.
• Bake first, freeze second. Unless a particular
recipe suggests otherwise, when preparing a large dish
and planning to freeze part, go ahead and cook or bake
the entire dish before freezing any of it (rather than
cooking only a portion of the dish and freezing the
rest of it uncooked).
Bake casseroles or hot dishes not-quite all the way.
When the casserole is nearly done, put the part for
today in a smaller dish and finish it. Cut the rest
into meal-size chunks, chill, wrap and freeze them
separately. (Cutting it into chunks is LOTS easier
before it's frozen.) Reheating a (thawed) chunk will
finish cooking it.
• Take the heat off. Chill hot foods in the
refrigerator before freezing them, to keep from
unnecessarily warming what's in the freezer. (Chill in
small portions, to speed chilling.) And don't put a
ton of cool food into the freezer at once.
• Separate first. Freeze small fresh fruits and
vegetables (or chopped-up large ones) nicely separated
on a wax-paper-covered baking sheet; when they're
frozen, pour them into freezer bags. This way (instead
of bagging before freezing) the pieces will stay
separate inside the bags and you can use as many as
you want.
• Don't forget to thaw. Bulky food should be thawed
(overnight in the refrigerator or quickly in the
microwave) before reheating. Absolutely thaw any raw
meat before cooking it -- otherwise the center might
never get very hot, and it could become a little
bacteria farm. Small or chopped-up fresh produce
tastes best when cooked straight from frozen, but if
it is to go into some dish so late in its cooking that
it won't get heated through, thaw it first.
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