A preview of the picks below. Full recommendations and notes throughout the article.
I also recently threw away about three pounds of grass-fed beef. I had made a pot of beef stew (an embarrassingly huge pot, I’m talking stood back and marveled at my culinary prowess pot) back in October, frozen most of it, and had recently defrosted the entire contents of said container (the plastic container with the lid that no longer seals properly, but I can’t seem to bring myself to toss) only to realize that the top three inches had taken on a grayish hue and a hint of freezer. As in freezer had seeped its way into the stew and colonized. Three pounds of grass-fed beef. An afternoon’s worth of my time. One sweet potato I’d been hoarding for beef stew. Gone.
And then it hit me, I’d done this before. Recently in fact, August (meatballs, lots of them.), June (curry) and so on ad infinitum, roughly every other month I’d forgotten something essential and been cooking for years. I stood there chuckling to myself (not very funny I suspect) as I pondered what else I’d recently burnt, broken or otherwise screwed up.
I thought about it. I thought about it some more. “What is wrong with me?” I thought. “Am I cursed?” Eventually I got beyond the “what is wrong with me” stage. I did some reading. I talked to Carol, a friend of mine who’s pretty darn good at the freezer. I came up with a list of things I was doing wrong. Not a long list. Just long enough to be embarrassing. The freezer was not cursed. Nor am I. It turns out that all along the freezer had been working just fine, and that I’d been making the same few mistakes over and over, and that those mistakes, in combination, were ruining all that great food I slaved over in the kitchen. I’ll go through my mistakes, and the changes I made, one at a time. None of the changes cost me much in the way of money (several cost nothing at all) and most of them are so small I’m surprised they had as big an effect as they did. (It’s been my experience that that’s how most of life works.)
The Packaging Mistakes
Freezing things in the original takeout container.
I’m going to get ahead of myself a little and say that those little plastic clamshells with cardboard lids from the take-out Chinese food aren’t freezer containers. They were meant to be thrown away. But I was frugal and efficient, so I ordered Thai food for dinner, ate half of my pad see ew, and put the rest in the freezer. A week later when I pulled it out to reheat for dinner, the container would’ve warped in the freezer, the lid would pop off, letting air in around the edges, and when I reheated the pad see ew the texture would be off, spongy from freezing and thawing because nothing could bring back the texture.
But that’s okay because all you have to do is spend an extra ten seconds to transfer the leftovers to a sealed container before putting it in the fridge. (You can toss the original container in the recycling.) That ten seconds can be the difference between freezer burn and enjoying leftovers that taste like food later.
Using the wrong kind of plastic bag.
Freezer bags. I always used sandwich bags because they were right there in the drawer and I didn’t think twice about it. Then I’d wonder why everything I pulled out of the freezer tasted like ass. Apparently, freezer bags are different from sandwich bags. Apparently. Sandwich bags are thinner than freezer bags and don’t have as secure of a seal. Also, they become super brittle at 0 degrees, and can easily split if you so much as sneeze in the freezer aisle at the supermarket. I’m pretty sure most of the time my food was basically just hanging out in the freezer, sans bag, for two months at a time. My apologies to freezer burn everywhere.
Freezer bags use a heavier gauge plastic to withstand the harsh freezer environment and typically have a superior double-track slider seal. Since making the switch to freezer bags, my food has not spoiled prematurely. It’s that simple.
Specifically labeled freezer bags, the thicker plastic, the stand-up bottom that makes them sit flat in the freezer drawer. A hundred and thirty-two of them lasts a year, which is roughly when you’ll want to use one again because, like me, you finally started cooking in batches.
View Pricing on AmazonLeaving too much air in the bag.
You see those weird little frosty/icy white crystals on the inside of your plastic bag? Those crystals are water molecules that escaped your food and ended up on the walls of your container. That’s freezer burn happening. And it’s caused by the air around your food. When you’re storing food in the freezer, be sure to get as much of the air out of the bag before zipping it closed. (Remember, air is made up of a bunch of different molecules, water molecules included.) If you leave that big balloon of air in there, the water molecules from the air are gonna end up on your food. It’s called sublimation. And it sucks.
Lower the bag slowly into a sink of water. The water pressure forces the air out of the bag. Remove the bag when it’s almost completely submerged, and seal it before any water can get inside. It sounds like a pain, but once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes about eight seconds. Your food will keep three or four times as long.
The slider seal makes the water displacement trick about twice as easy because you can slide it shut with one hand. The bag is sturdy, the seal is reliable, and I find myself reaching for these over the standard zip kind every time I’m freezing something I actually care about.
View Pricing on AmazonNot actually vacuum sealing anything.
Last spring I caved and bought a vacuum sealer and I am not sure what took me so long to jump on this band wagon. I used to think those things were for butchers and fish catching reality show contestants, not for a gal making chili on a Sunday. Since last spring, vacuum sealing has been a game changer for me and my freezer.
My meat keeps eight to twelve months in the freezer now, rather than the two or three I used to get. The vacuum sealer does away with the air before sealing, so you actually achieve what you’re sort of faking with the water trick. Portioned-out cooked meals in vacuum-sealed bags taste like I just made them. It’s the only thing I’ve ever bought for my kitchen as an adult that I have no regrets about.
The automatic bag detection is the feature that made this my pick over the manual ones. You drop the bag in, it figures out what to do, you walk away. The built-in handheld sealer also works on the reusable zipper bags. After two years of using this I cannot remember what life was like before it.
View Pricing on AmazonUsing the cheapest vacuum sealer bags I could find.
I got some cheap no-name bags online when I first got my sealer to save a couple bucks (they work great, sealing-wise. except for the fact that they occasionally unseal themselves a month or so into freezer-dom, which can make one a bit nervous about ALL of their sealed bags when/if that happens.).
Bags: Get the thick ones. Ick, they’re 30% more expensive. But when you stick your hand in the freezer drawer and knock into them they don’t tear, and more importantly the seal holds. Which, again, is the point of the whole system.
The quart size fits a single portion of soup or a chicken breast or a couple of meatballs, which is the size I actually want to pull out of the freezer most nights. Ninety bags is roughly a year of single dinners. They’re textured for proper air extraction and they don’t unseal themselves in the cold.
View Pricing on AmazonSingle-use plastic for every single thing.
I went through a lot of bags, even good reusable freezer bags, which I’d toss after a single use because the time it took to wash and dry them meant I’d already be on to something else by the time I could use them again.
I still use plastic bags for meat (I’m not patient enough to properly sanitize a silicone bag after raw chicken goes in it) but for everything else, which are soups, herbs, bell peppers (which I chop and freeze for future stir fry needs), I’ve switched to silicone bags. They’re easy to clean (dishwasher safe.), last forever and are a great substitute for single use plastics in the kitchen.
Genuinely leakproof, genuinely dishwasher safe, and the silicone holds up in the freezer without going brittle. The four-pack covers about everything I freeze that isn’t raw protein. After a year of using them they look exactly the same as the day I bought them, which is more than I can say for most things in my kitchen.
View Pricing on AmazonThe Container Mistakes
Freezing in containers with bad seals.
I froze chili in one of these containers and by the time I defrosted it three weeks later it had frozen into one big chili flavoured ice cube with sugar like crystals on top. I had a whole graveyard of these Tupperware lids. Some my mothers, some from a 2003 wedding shower. None of them sealed properly anymore. I kept meaning to throw them out, but figured there must be SOME use for them.
I’m impressed with how well this container holds up in the freezer. It’s got a locking lid (four clips to be exact) which keeps things sealed up nice and tight. No more freezer burn creeping its way in. And my food tastes like… well… food.
The four locking clips on the lid mean the seal is actually airtight, and the clear walls let you see what’s inside without unsealing them. The 9.6-cup size holds most of a soup pot or a full batch of leftover pasta. They stack flat in the freezer, which is the other quiet miracle of these.
View Pricing on AmazonUsing glass containers that aren’t freezer rated.
Homemade tomato sauce goes great in mason jars, right? So I filled a jar and plopped it in the freezer. What did I wake up to? A cracked jar and a slow-moving tomato sauce glacier making its way down the side of my freezer. Lesson learned: not all glass containers are created equally. Some glass containers aren’t meant to go in the freezer because the glass is too thin and will crack when the contents expand.
Did you know that not all tempered glass is freezer safe? Mine is, phew. Always check the little print. Freezer safe, tempered glass. Who knew? I always check now.
Freezer rated, microwave safe, oven safe, dishwasher safe. The four-corner locking lid creates an actual airtight seal, and the glass goes from freezer to oven without complaint. I use this one for the big batch lasagna that I cut into portions and reheat over the course of a week.
View Pricing on AmazonNo portioning, just one giant block of food.
I’ll give you an example of how cooking in bulk has failed spectacularly for me. I made beef stew. It was delicious. But the next day, I was already tired of it. If I’d made it in a small batch, I would have eaten it all up and moved on. But I made it in a big batch. And I froze it in one big container. Which means that three months later, when I defrosted it for dinner, I had to defrost the whole thing. Which means I had stew for dinner two nights in a row. Which means I was sick of stew and wound up throwing some away. Freezing worked. Portion planning bombed.
Divide your meals into smaller portions and freeze. This one has been my favorite freezer tip so far. I portion mine into two-portion sizes and lay the containers flat in the freezer so they freeze flat. When I want a quick meal, I just grab a couple of containers that night. No more standing there watching a whole pot defrost in the microwave and getting sick and tired of stew.
Twenty containers, two compartments each, so you can keep the stew separate from the rice or the noodles or whatever is going underneath it. Single-portion sizing means one container is one dinner. They stack tightly in the freezer drawer and you can microwave them straight from frozen.
View Pricing on AmazonSoups frozen in a shapeless lump.
Soup is great to have on hand but in the past, I’ve had trouble storing it. I’d put soup in a quart container and freeze it only to have a giant dome of soup that couldn’t be stacked or stored well and took all day to thaw. I also couldn’t always remember what I’d frozen or how much of it there was.
Silicone freezer molds are game changers when it comes to portioning out soup for the freezer. I fill each of the one cup sections with soup, freeze and pop out into a freezer bag. When I want a quick snack I’ll eat a soup cube out of hand. Need a lunch? I’ll heat up two soup cubes. Dinner for two? Throw four soup cubes in a pot. Freezer soup cubes are easy to stack and make my freezer a little more organized. I’m kicking myself I didn’t figure this out a decade ago.
Each cube is exactly one cup, which is the math you’ll be doing in your head every time you make soup from now on. The silicone makes the cubes pop out cleanly when frozen solid, and the lid keeps everything tidy while it freezes. This is the product that finally fixed my freezer-soup problem after about thirty years of getting it wrong. It also works for my chicken tortilla soup leftovers, which I now keep on permanent rotation.
View Pricing on AmazonNo way to freeze large flat blocks.
Instant pot beef stew and other soups, marinara sauce, etc. When I make extra, I like to have it ready to go for a quick meal later. I want to freeze the extra, and I want it in a flat brick so it takes up minimal space in the freezer and thaws faster. So how do you get that flat brick shape out of a bag? For years I’ve just poured it in and smooshed it with my hands like some kind of medieval baker. Sometimes I get it nice and flat, sometimes I don’t. About a 40% success rate I’d say.
These trays have rigid frames to keep the freezer bags flat while the contents inside are freezing. Just fill and seal the bags, and remove when frozen. I like that these turn liquids into bricks that can be neatly stacked in my freezer like books on a shelf. Using these has definitely helped me make use of all of the space in my freezer.
The rigid frame holds the bag perfectly upright while you fill it, then perfectly flat while it freezes. You pull it out the next morning and you have a stackable two-cup brick of soup or stew or sauce. Two of them means you can do back-to-back batches without waiting. It’s the freezer hack I tell everyone about now.
View Pricing on AmazonThe Organization Mistakes
No system, just a frozen pile.
My freezer drawer was like some sort of glacier with maybe two bags of something peeking out the top. If there was anything else in there, it was a closely guarded secret. More often than not, I’d rummage around, get frustrated, slam the drawer shut and order Thai food. Anything buried at the depths of that freezer was basically there in perpetuity. I’d eventually uncover it, only to discover it’d been there for two years and now just tasted like freezer.
Freezer dividers. In my kitchen we have a freezer rack with dividers that split the freezer drawer vertically. This helps keep everything neatly organized. Bags of soup or pre-made meals are stood up on end like books on a shelf making it easy to find what you are looking for. No more digging through the freezer to see if there is still that bag of chicken in there. Everything is easy to spot and you just grab what you need and close the door.
The adjustable dividers slide to fit whatever you’re freezing in flat blocks, the handles let you lift the whole loaded rack out at once, and the open top means cold air still circulates around everything. This is the single piece of equipment that turned my chest freezer into something I actually use, instead of a deep cold pit I avoid.
View Pricing on AmazonNothing labeled, nothing dated.
I’ve had several bags of unidentifiable freezer items over the years. It’s always something I cooked myself, but when I open the freezer, all I see are gray and beige lumps. Maybe that’s curry, maybe that’s stew, maybe that’s the soup I made last Tuesday. Maybe it’s soup from the Bush administration. There’s no way to tell. So I’ll defrost a lump, hold it up to my nose, make a face, and chuck it. Every. Single. Time.
Label and date everything. You’ll always know what’s in there, and you’ll also know how fresh it is. And you’ll eat more of what’s in there, because it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. This is the easiest tip on this list (a $10 pack of labels and a Sharpie marker), but I promise that it will have the biggest impact.
Clear so they don’t look ugly on the front of containers, sturdy enough to survive the freezer, removable enough to come off cleanly when the container empties. I keep a sheet of these next to the freezer with a Sharpie. Every container gets a name and a date the moment it goes in. The system is that small and that effective.
View Pricing on AmazonTrying to write on bags with whatever pen is nearby.
Ballpoint pens don’t write well on plastic (or at least, mine doesn’t). It won’t adhere to the surface. You end up with an illegible mess, or nothing at all. This, of course, defeats the purpose. And so, for a good year or so, freezer bags went into the freezer with no identification whatsoever. Back to square one.
Permanent marker. I’m talking Sharpie, but any permanent marker will work. You want a marker that will write on plastic and on the labels you’re using for your freezer food. I keep mine in the same kitchen drawer as the labels themselves. The idea is to eliminate any and all barriers between “I should label that” and “I labeled that.” If the marker isn’t there when you need it, or it doesn’t write well the first time you use it, you’re not labeling things.
Twenty-four Sharpies is enough that you can keep one in the kitchen drawer, one near the freezer, one in the pantry, one in the junk drawer, and still have eighteen left for when one inevitably ends up in the laundry. The color variety lets you color-code by category if you want to, which I do for soups versus proteins versus sauces.
View Pricing on AmazonNo inventory list, so you forget what’s in there.
Keeping track of what you have in your freezer is important. I recently went and bought chicken only to realize later that I already had some in the freezer. I had labeled everything, but if I don’t keep track of it, eventually it’s going to get freezer burn and I’ll end up having to throw it away.
Make a list of what’s in your freezer and stick it on the door. This tip is so simple yet so effective. When I store something in the freezer, I add it to the list, and when I take something out, I erase it. Having this list taped on my freezer door (I use a dry erase marker on a piece of paper) means when I’m making my grocery list I know what’s available for me to use. This one tip has taken my freezer from being a black hole of frozen items to a very usable pantry.
The Temperature & Habit Mistakes
Not knowing if your freezer is actually cold enough.
Freezers are supposed to be at or below 0°F. Mine was at 12°F, still cold enough to keep things frozen, but not cold enough to stop the slow decline in food quality. All of my bagging and labeling efforts were for nothing. My freezer wasn’t up to its half of the bargain.
I used an inexpensive freezer thermometer to see if my freezer was really at 0F. (This particular thermometer cost me about eight dollars, but they’re available in a wide range of prices.) Sure enough, it was. And after a thirty-second adjustment, sure enough, my foods were lasting the amount of time I expected them to based on the freezer storage chart.
Analog, no batteries, never breaks. The three-inch dial is big enough to read from across the kitchen when you open the freezer door. You hang it from a shelf or stand it up on a flat surface. It’s the kind of cheap, dumb, reliable thing that should be in every freezer and somehow isn’t in most.
View Pricing on AmazonPutting warm food directly in the freezer.
Laziness led me to shove the entire still-warm pot into the freezer, which has two major consequences: raising the overall temperature of the freezer long enough to thaw some of what you’ve stored there, and creating an uneven block of frozen chili with a slushy middle that will remain unfrozen for many hours.
Cool to room temperature on the counter, or if you’re in a hurry, stand the container in a sink of ice for 15 minutes. It doesn’t change the texture of your food. Doesn’t adversely affect other frozen items.
Overstuffing the freezer until nothing freezes properly.
On the other hand, freezing foods in bulk can be problematic as well. I once stuffed my freezer so full that I could not get the freezer door to close completely. The middle of the heap formed a warmer microclimate in which freezer food languished away, deprived of proper cold air circulation.
Don’t forget to leave at least twenty percent of the volume empty. Cold air needs room to circulate to keep everything nice and cold. If you can’t see any space left in the freezer, it’s probably time to use up some of your frozen goods before buying more.
Refreezing things you already thawed.
But what if the stringy texture and dry flavor of your defrosted chicken had less to do with the chicken and more to do with you? Freezing and thawing affects the cellular structure of meats, which can result in that undesirable texture. However, the extent of this degradation is determined largely by how many times the food was frozen and thawed before it was finally cooked. Instead of blaming chicken, maybe we should consider our own behavior. Perhaps instead of shoving defrosted chicken back in the freezer when we change our minds about dinner, we should be thinking ahead and planning meals.
Once thawed, meat should not be refrozen. If you change your mind and decide you don’t want to cook the thawed meat, cook it first and then refreeze. Quality suffers much less when refreezing cooked meat. Don’t defrost and refreeze meat. This makes a huge difference in the quality of thawed meat. If you need to refreeze defrosted meat, cook it first.
Defrosting on the counter.
I’ve also learned my lesson about leaving meat out on the counter to thaw. One time I forgot about a pound of ground beef, and it was out for about four hours, warm to the touch. It was well and truly in the “bacteria zone” and I had no choice but to toss it. Money down the drain, both the cost of the beef and the chicken-and-rice dinner I was planning on having.
The best way to defrost chicken is to leave it in the refrigerator overnight. This is by far the safest method for defrosting chicken and will help maintain the texture and quality of the meat. Planning ahead is key, though. If you need to defrost chicken quickly, put it in a leak-proof plastic bag and submerge in cold water. Change the water every 30 minutes until the chicken is defrosted. Don’t ever thaw chicken on the counter. Bacteria can multiply rapidly when chicken is left out at room temperature for more than 2 hours. You could end up making someone really, really sick.
Freezing things that don’t actually freeze well.
On a related note, I once attempted to freeze salad (I know, I know). It didn’t go well. Nor did my attempts to freeze yogurt, sour cream, mayonnaise, cucumber (fresh, that is), or a hard-boiled egg (which, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why turns out rubbery after freezing). Most dairy products don’t freeze well, particularly those with high water content, because they separate when thawed. And most veggies with high water content turn to mush when thawed.
Cooked meat, grains and beans freeze really well. Soups, stews and other dishes with a broth or sauce base freeze really well. Butter, certain cheeses and hot sauces freeze really well. Raw potatoes, salad greens, raw eggs, fried foods and dishes with a cream base do not freeze well. Freeze what freezes well and you’ll find that freezing food is a breeze.
No ice cube trick for small portions.
Leftover tomato paste, pesto, broth, wine for cooking, fresh herbs preserved in oil. I’ve lost countless cans of tomato paste to the garbage after using one tablespoon to season a dish, only to return a week later to find a furry mold colony thriving in the remaining product. I could list many other examples of ingredients I’ve discarded for one reason or another, but each time it represented actual dollars down the drain (literally, in the case of the wine).
Instead of tossing out that last heaping spoonful of tomato paste, freeze the remainder in a large (two-inch wells) silicone ice cube tray (these yield about an ounce per cube). When a recipe calls for two tablespoons paste, pop two cubes from the bag (label it.) in your freezer. Works great with pesto, stock, etc., too. Voila, less waste.
The two-inch cubes are the right size for a tablespoon or two of any leftover ingredient, the silicone makes them pop out cleanly when frozen, and they’re sturdy enough to stack other things on top while they freeze. I have three of these in rotation now, dedicated to stock, herbs in oil, and tomato paste respectively.
View Pricing on AmazonCooking once instead of cooking once-for-twice.
Instead of making just enough food for that night, I’d make more (using the same-sized pot, no less.), knowing full well that I’d be too tired some nights to cook and would appreciate having something in the freezer. Cleaning up after cooking one serving vs. two isn’t all that different. My freezer used to be pretty empty; now it’s full of food I made when I had the energy to make extra.
I try to cook things in double batches on Sundays so I can freeze half. For example, the marginal cost of making twelve meatballs instead of six is probably three extra minutes, but I can have a bag of them in my freezer ready for a weeknight meal where I don’t want to think about what I’m making for dinner. Right now, I have bags of shredded mississippi pot roast, sloppy joe mix, and crockpot bbq chicken ready to be turned into sandwiches. I’m glad I can perform small acts of kindness for future weeks.
But it’s all doable and most of it is free or pretty inexpensive. Some of it I do religiously (like labeling containers with the contents and date and portioning things out before I freeze them) and some of it I do sporadically (like my freezer clean out and reorganization that I keep meaning to do every few months). Overall, though, since I started taking my freezer habits more seriously I’d say that instead of getting a usable meal out of my freezer about 30% of the time, I now get a usable meal out of my freezer about 90% of the time. That’s a pretty good improvement, don’t you think? And you know what else? I actually look forward to cooking a bunch of food on Sundays because I know that Future Me will enjoy eating what Present Me slaved over in the kitchen. That’s an even better improvement. If you’re interested in seeing what I freeze often, I double (or even triple.) a lot of my Instant Pot dinner recipes and freeze half (or two thirds.) for later, and my freezer staples these days mostly include variations on my easy chicken dinners.
The freezer is not a graveyard. It’s a pantry that just happens to be very, very cold.