Freezing not only allows you to save any food for a long time, but also greatly facilitates the cooking process. It is especially relevant for those housewives who value their time, so they try to minimize its loss by processing most of the ingredients necessary for cooking dishes in advance. Properly frozen foods retain the maximum biological value, shape, color, smell, texture and taste.
Pick your recipe
Particularly relevant is the freezing of products on the eve of solemn and significant events. By placing the ingredients necessary for preparing festive dishes on the shelves of the freezer, you can not worry about not having time to wash, peel, cut, chop, chop or chop products by a certain time, and do more useful things, for example, decorating a house or choosing holiday dress.
Before sending food to the freezer, clean the camera from ice and snow, thoroughly wash and dry. Set the device to the most favorable temperature regime for food storage (from -18 ° С to -23 ° С).
Many are used to freezing food in plastic bags. In fact, if you really want to maintain the original taste of the food, it is undesirable to use such packaging. Firstly, in spite of the excellent tightness at first glance, it nevertheless passes odors, for example, from products stored in the neighborhood. Secondly, during prolonged storage of food, plastic bags accumulate toxic and harmful substances to the human body. The ideal option is to use special freezing bags made from environmentally friendly materials and providing an additional guarantee of the maximum preservation of the taste of frozen foods.
It is better to place the products on the bottom shelf of the freezer and only after they are absolutely frozen should be moved to the top. The fact is that the air temperature on the lower shelf is always slightly lower than in the upper compartments, and this contributes to the rapid freezing of products, the elimination of the formation of ice crystals on their surface, and, therefore, minimizing the deterioration of their structure and taste.
The processing of various types of products before sending them to the freezer is somewhat different. So, the vegetables should be washed and dried, dipped for a minute in boiling salted water to prevent their taste from deteriorating, cool, cut into cubes, straws, slices, slices or whetstones and only then send them to the freezer. Some vegetables, for example, cherry tomatoes, do not need to be chopped. It is enough to make several punctures in their peel so that they do not crack.
Fruits and berries must be washed and dried thoroughly before freezing. Seeds should be removed from plums, apricots and peaches, and the stem should be cut off from strawberries and strawberries. Most berries retain their shape and taste when thawed, so they do not need pre-treatment. These include: cherry, black and red currants, cranberries, gooseberries, lingonberries, blueberries.
Before freezing the mushrooms, clean them and wash thoroughly. Check if they are bitter. Separate old copies from young ones and process them separately. Cut the mushrooms, cook for 5 minutes in slightly salted water, fold in a colander, squeeze thoroughly and put them into bags. Old mushrooms come in handy for making soups, young ones - second courses. Only Russula and chanterelles should not be frozen. When thawed, they are inevitably bitter.
Meat, chicken and fish before freezing, on the contrary, do not need to be washed. It is better not to divide the bird into parts, but to freeze the whole carcass. Meat and fish free from scales for maximum uniform freezing should be divided into pieces weighing approximately 0.5 kg.
In no case should you freeze food repeatedly. This will not only cause significant damage to their appearance, but also significantly impair taste.