Frozen Food
I just thought I would share this with you as I have been having quite a long running discussion with Waitrose regarding their instructions for freezing their food products. You often see jokes, especially from people with big chest freezers how they find something in the bottom that has been there years! For years we have been buying food and freezing it. One of the advantages of some offers is to buy more at a cheaper rate than you can immediately use and freeze the rest. A while ago we noticed that nearly all Waitrose packaged food, mainly meat but ready meals as well, said that the product could be frozen but it had to be used within a month of its original use by date. Checking other supermarkets they seem to be doing the same, the exception seems to be M&S who say 3 months on some of their packaging. The long and short of it I have at long last got Waitrose to accept that keeping things frozen for longer is perfectly safe but you might have to accept that there could be some deterioration in how it looks and taste compared to eating it when freshly purchased.
David
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I'm afraid there are many things I dislike from the freezer. I think my main dislike is frozen bread - we just don't do that. Frozen peas are OK, as is frozen mince and meals made from mince. I find chicken watery when it's thawed out, whatever you do to it, and many other meat stuff I really do prefer fresh. Years ago, my wife used to make shortbread biscuits which for some reason she used to freeze. We used to eat them straight from the freezer.... 🤣🤣
The freezer is really useful for keeping tubs of Ben & Jerry's - although it's never in there very long..... and I have been known to put a bottle of Prosecco in the freezer for a short time, for a quick cool down... 😀
David
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We grow a lot of fruit and veg so continually freeze the surplus. Some things keep well, raspberries and gooseberries will last a year, runner beans go watery quickly. Just now I'll be picking and freezing peas and broad beans. In fact buying a large amount of freezable uk veg in season is good as most can be frozen. Tomatoes, peppers, courgettes etc are really good if roasted first, always handy through the winter to make soups and add to casseroles. Some "experts" will say nutritional values are lost through freezing, they probably are but good rotation works. Meat does deteriorate but if cooked as a meal and frozen it might survive longer. I think you just have to judge for yourself. Better than throwing leftovers away.
DSB we freeze bread, usually it's home made but I froze a huge tiger loaf recently and that was ok...heaven knows what the tiger bit is?!!
Freezers have been around for so long now I can't think you'll come to much harm with the contents.
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We have a lot of frozen food, including a large chest freezer in the barn (shared with our son and family) full of our own beef, and occasionally “too good to miss” items, like turkeys after Christmas.
And in the pantry another chest freezer, always nearly full, for homemade stuff (casseroles, soups, pies etc ) and general leftovers. Plus a few bought Ready Meals from https://www.cookfood.net/ for when I don’t feel like cooking, and taking away in the caravan.
And .... a small under counter one for ice cream and frozen veg.
And some days there’s nothing to eat.
But, come the apocalypse we’ll survive!
Don't ask what’s in the bottom - I can’t remember.
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We have two freezers - a large upright one in the garage and a smaller under-counter one in the kitchen. Plus - we have been known to switch the caravan freezer on and use that for short-term storage over busy periods like Christmas. We always batch cook and put half-a-dozen or so meals in the freezer in one go. Home made soups, casseroles, curries etc are easily stored and always come in handy - and there's always a selection in the caravan when we go away. Don't know how we managed when I was a kid - when the best storage we had was a meat-safe in the pantry and perhaps a 'cold' slab!! Actually getting a fridge when I was about 10 was a major milestone in our house
I know for a fact, that lurking somewhere in one of the freezer drawers is a selection of pheasant and venison from last winter!! It'll be fine
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We only try to shop every 2 weeks so our freezer is used for lots of things. We have frozen bread for years now, never tastes any different. My baker makes huge sourdough loaves so I could never get through one before it deteriorated, so it’s sliced and frozen. We also freeze milk, always fine as long as bottle doesn’t split!!! I have also found with Waitrose, apart from the timescales which we generally have ignored anyway, is that the items that aren’t supposed to be frozen - Charlie Bighams is one case in point - ‘do not freeze as the rice doesn’t like it’ - these meals have been frozen (ok by mistake the first time) and have tasted fine after cooking. I must admit to having some meat and ready meals since before Christmas and I’m not worried about using them.
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We regularly freeze rice, heddlo. Usually cook enough for two meals and then freeze half. Five minutes in the rice cooker - from frozen - in the microwave and it's perfect.
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We don't have a massive frozen food storage capacity in our house, the bottom half of a built in F/F and an undercounter freezer in the utility. My concern was that there seemed to have been an unnoticed change in the suggested recommendations for how long food can be left frozen which seems only to have happened fairly recently. Hence my extended correspondence with Waitrose and some reluctance for them to get off the fence!!! It took several attempts to get them to answer the question I posed which I felt was a bit unusual for Waitrose? I don't suppose we have anything in our freezers over six months old?
David
PS Re Charlie Bingham, I wonder it its the packaging that is the problem as he uses a lot of wooden containers. We no longer use them in the van because it makes the van smell like a BBQ
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We like CB meals, good to hear they can be frozen successfully. There are a lot of good quality frozen meals around.
David I suspect Waitrose are cautious dealing with the general public, freezers with dodgy thermostats, ancient appliances etc.
If a woolly mammoth can remain frozen in the Yukon permafrost for 30,000+ years there's hope for the odd sausage or pie.
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The above replies all seem very professional. ;-)
The navigator has a photographic mind when using the freezer and pulls out the right home prepared in its frozen state most of the time.That said, having mince meat balls with a cup of tea , or bran and raisin balls with spaghetti is intended, I am told.
i had suggested sticky labels, but been told that knowing what is in the bag lessens cooking creativity.
Rgds
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Pretty certain it wasn't sold in Waitrose
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Some where in the depths of my memory I seem to recall that foods left in the Arctic, but more often the Antarctic, by the early explorers are found to be reasonably tasty always excepting those in metal cans. Tin poisoning appears more likely than anything else since they never found a successful method of totally sealing away the steel of the can and so the tin -lining, round those seams, tends to fragment and do nasty things to the contents and then anybody eating them
.Now I'll head off and look for a nice drop of Scotch Broth to spread on my ice cream
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It's not the taste you have to worry about - but the woolly bits getting stuck in your teeth is a bit of a nuisance
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Last evening my wife decided to dive into the chest freezer to recover two homemade "cottage pies" for our meal. When cooked and served up turned out to be one fish pie and one cheese and potato pie. Once again she said, "I really must label things" lol
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Evening
We're having a back office/ kitchen rejig so taking the opportunity to defrost the fridge freezer for a deep clean. Found in the depths 2 M&S rump steaks that are 16 months old. Mrs says "in the skip", I however don't like food waste so this morning it was steak and eggs on the cadac for breakfast. It was lush. Saving the other one for Saturday morning, big day won't get a lunch break! There is half a bag of frozen peas but I can't
JK
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Sorry Brian, peas are the work of the devil in any shape or form. Now, medium to well rump, grainy mustard slathered over then topped with a couple of snotty eggs, heaven on a plate.
Only use for peas is if you've bumped your head and hold that evil frozen bag on the swelling
JK
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We have 2 freezers one is just a small one under the fridge in the kitchen, used only for veg. The other us a chest freezer in the utility room off the kitchen.
In that there is everything, meat, fish, ice cream, bread and home made dinners.
Over the years there has been times I have 'found' items at the bottom which are clearly out of date, so they get binned. Most things though are fine. My rule of thumb is fish, bacon and chicken get used early while in date, by that I mean within 6 mths. I find bacon changes colour and takes on a fishy smell if out of date. Chicken and fish I would never mess with, far to likely to get a bad result if off.
Most other things like fruit can happily stay there for over 12mths.
If something looks wrong it usually is.
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We waste food at an alarming level due to a lack of common sense, but I believe as above it it does not look correct then do not use. I am anal in my approach to left overs, putting everything in a sealed container with a sticky label and freezing. The label has to go before the container goes into the freezer, or it will fall off. Lakeland plastic make the best labels and are all we will now use.
If your freezer is running correctly in the range of -18 to -20 then the contents will last for years. They could easily outlast the person who put them in there and be perfectly safe to eat. Some loss of taste would eventually be noticeable, but I would be surprised if you could recognise this.
The only foodstuff I am not happy to freeze for more than a couple of months is anything with uncooked bacon where the packet has been opened, even though I have then re-packaged in an airtight container. I find the taste change not to my liking.
Colin
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I had to give up my allotment 5 years ago but I still have blackcurrants stored in our chest freezer to regularly make a bottle of blackcurrant gin, which I love. I don’t think I’d actually eat them but they look fine. Sadly only enough now for a couple more bottles, never seem to see blackcurrants for sale. Used to have lots at the allotment but the bushes won’t grow in our garden - too shady.
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Evening
I spent a big part of my working life in the poultry industry. Back in 1984 the factory we used to supply stock to closed down. It was a frozen product place, these days everything is just chilled. Lots of stock was given to staff, so we took advantage of it. Some of the stock had been frozen for 8 years! We ate lots of free chicken back then, I'm still here
I'll agree with the common sense approach someone said upthread, if it looks or smell dodgy the bin it.
Don't start me on rebagging and relabelling products
JK
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If ever you're up in Cumbria, pop into Cranstons at Penrith. As well as a wonderful array of local meat, they sell some frozen loose fruit - including blackcurrants. I've a big bag in the freezer ready for pies and crumbles etc.
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DEBSC, we have found loose frozen vegetables and fruit including blackcurrants in some garden garden centres, especially those that have a farm shop or food hall in them, also seen them in some independent farm shops, maybe worth a look in those places when you are out and about.
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Oh result! On delving to the bottom of the chest freezer I found two more tubs of blackcurrants that I didn’t know I had! Treasure indeed. Now I’m going to be unusually selfish and not tell the grandchildren, we normally have a deal, half the blackcurrants for my gin and the other half for blackcurrant jelly, which they love with their chicken roast and sausages. So thank you for your suggestions, I think these will last me a little while and then it will have to be a blackcurrant hunt. At the moment some are now seeping in gin and sugar for a couple of months.
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