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Avoid Freezer Burn with these 3 Rules for Freezing Food Long-Term
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May 21, 2024
Freezing some foods can make them last almost indefinitely. That is, if you make sure you follow these 3 rules. Learn how I store food in the freezer to make sure it lasts as long as possible while staying fresh. Pantry Preparedness is a trademark of Income School LLC, an Idaho Limited Liability Company
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Freezing food can be one of the best and safest ways
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to preserve a lot of different kinds of foods, but making sure that we freeze our food
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the best way that we can can help ensure that the quality of the food and the safety of the food
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stays as high as possible. Hey my friends, welcome back to Pancake Preparedness
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Today we're gonna talk about freezing food. Freezing is one of the best ways to preserve food
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in large part because when food is frozen, from a safety standpoint
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it can basically last indefinitely. Now we all know that from a practical standpoint
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that's usually not how it turns out, but there are some reasons for that
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And so I wanna walk through some of the best ways to ensure that our frozen food
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stays as high quality as possible. From a health safety standpoint, freezing your food is one of the best ways to keep it safe
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in large part because basically while it's frozen, unhealthy bacteria, like unsafe bacteria
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just can't grow in your food. And so the food won't spoil in that way
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However, the downside of freezing our food is that over time it does seem to get bad
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from a quality standpoint, and that's because of what we call freezer burn. Essentially in a cold space like a freezer
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the air is not able to hold as much moisture. And as a result, the air inside of your freezer
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tends to be really, really dry. And so that air will suck all the moisture
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out of whatever's frozen if that isn't totally sealed in. So the first step whenever I wanna freeze food
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is to as much as possible, have it in a sealed package of some kind
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So for example, let me show you what I just did last night
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I had a pork loin, my wife bought two big pork loins, they were on sale and they just looked really good
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And she cut one of them, she sliced it into pork chops. She put some of them in the crock pot
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and we had them for dinner, but we still had like 12 pork chops left
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On top of that, we had a second pork loin. So I took the second pork loin and I cut it in half
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so we could have two roasts or we could cut one of them up in the future
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for chops or whatever, but can also make a roast out of it. So I took those pork chops
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and I put them into these vacuum sealed bags as you can see here. Now, if you'll notice, I did place more than one per bag
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So there's just no need to package them completely individually, not for us
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but also just to save on the packaging. I don't need to use up a ton of this vacuum sealing material
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because I can put multiple in one package, but you'll notice that I laid them all flat
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There's only one layer thick of pork chops. So I laid them side by side, I didn't stack them
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Then you can see that I vacuum seal them. I get a ton of the air out of them
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I try not to suck out much of the moisture. I just get as much air out as I can
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And then I seal them off really good. Whenever I vacuum seal, I almost always put two seals on it
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because I've had that first seal fail plenty of times where after it's been in the freezer for a little bit
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I noticed that it is, it's not vacuum sealed anymore. And if that's the case
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then we're not getting a lot of benefit out of this. Now, sometimes when we freeze foods
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we'll use Ziploc bags. I've just noticed that over time, Ziploc bags, they do
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they don't like totally perfectly seal because I know over time I do get air in them
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They just aren't quite as good. So vacuum sealing is my preference
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but we did this with freezer bags for a long time and it works really well too
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The next thing that I do is I take whatever I'm freezing, in this case, these pork chops, and I like to lay them out on a baking sheet
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one layer thick. And then I take them out and I put them in my freezer in the garage
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I have a perfect spot for that here in this freezer. This is mostly our dairy freezer
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We have three standup freezers in our garage. And this one is mostly all dairy products
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And that top shelf is just full of milk. And so I just set it on top of the milk
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There's plenty of headspace above that. It's where the cold air first comes into the freezer
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And so it's gonna freeze quickly, but also there's just nothing right around it
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Once again, because I laid these only one layer thick, both in the vacuum sealed packaging
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but also now on this tray, they're able to freeze as quickly as possible
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The faster that your food freezes, the less of an issue you're gonna have
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from a food safety standpoint. We need to get it as cold as possible, as quickly as possible
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From the refrigerator into the vacuum sealed packaging, into the freezer. And the quicker that we freeze it
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the safer it's gonna be, but also the better the quality is gonna be
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I do the same thing oftentimes with other stuff that I freeze
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If I chop up carrots and I wanna freeze it, I don't vacuum seal it first
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I actually just lay out the carrots on a tray and I freeze them in the freezer as quickly as possible
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And then once they're frozen solid, that's when I bring them back in
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put them in a bag, or maybe even vacuum seal them and then put them back in the freezer
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With those larger roasts, I vacuum sealed them as well, but they're bigger, thicker roasts
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they're gonna take longer to freeze. I don't worry about putting them necessarily on a big tray
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but I did take them out to the freezer and I put them in separate spots
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where each of them was completely surrounded by other things that were already frozen
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and so they'd be able to freeze as quickly as possible. I'm not gonna set them right next to each other
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or stack them on top of each other because they're gonna have more of their current heat
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that's inside of them. Heat, because it's warmer inside of those pork roasts
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than it is in the freezer. And it's gonna take longer for that heat to dissipate
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throughout the freezer into the cold. I let them freeze overnight. And then in the morning
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they were completely frozen solid this morning and I just took them all out, I stacked them all up and I put them in the freezer
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where I actually wanted to store them, stacked neatly together and well-organized
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The third key and important thing to keeping your frozen food good as long as possible
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is to not let food thaw and refreeze multiple times. If that happens, the quality of the food
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is gonna go down every single time. For example, we do a lot of frozen vegetables
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either ones we grow in the garden or ones we buy from the store
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What we'll do is we'll take out a package of those vegetables and we'll often end up
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using up about half a package and then we have the rest
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The best way to do that is to cut it open, use up that half a package and get the rest back
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in the freezer as quickly as possible. Also sealing off the bag that they're in
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as well as possible. You could put them inside of like another Ziploc bag
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or something or you could just tie them off. We just use like a twist tie or something
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But I twist it up and I get it pretty tight. I don't leave a lot of air space in the top of an opened bag
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I'll twist it pretty tight so there's very little air and then I'll put the twist tie back on
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and put it back in the freezer. Again, by leaving as little air in there as possible
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we're gonna help minimize that freezer burn. So those are your three rules of freezing food
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The first one, try to seal it off from the outside environment
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and typically with as little extra air inside of the packaging as possible
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The second rule, freeze it fast. The quicker that you can get it frozen all the way through
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the higher quality your food's gonna stay, the flavor's gonna stay better, the freezer burn's gonna be minimized
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and of course it's gonna be safer. And that third rule is as much as possible
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do not let your food thaw and refreeze over and over and over again
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And your food's gonna last for a really long time. As you can see, we freeze a lot of food
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That's why we have three freezers. And I can tell you that you can probably freeze a lot more foods than you might think that you can
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as long as you follow those principles. I hope that was helpful for you. If you like preparedness stuff, food storage
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as well as anything else preparedness, I think you're gonna like this channel
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That's what we do here at Pantry Preparedness. I hope to see you in the next video. ♪♪��
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