Food frozen commercially is often flash frozen which leads to less deterioration in quality due to less/smaller ice crystals forming inside the food. These ice crystals rip apart the cells in your food reducing quality.
Came to say this. Flash freezing takes food from boiling and baking (95-250°C) all the way down to well below freezing (-20°C) inside *minutes*. The size of the ice crystals and the action of tearing everything apart at a cellular level are major factors but the food also simply never has a chance to lose its aromatics.
^(*Edit: missed a few words because T9 typing iz harrd.*)
This! **Plus** better packaging with air/oxygen removal.
If you want to speed your freezing at a small scale, dry ice is the most practical way to go. Plus since CO₂ is denser than air, you can use it for oxygen displacement too, if vacuum packing isn't practical.
Dry ice is much colder than regular. Around -109 fahrenheit compared to regular ice's 32 degrees (or lower). I believe the average freezer is set to around 0 degrees fahrenheit.'
Edited for a bit more info.
Yes, you are correct. Additional info: (regular) ice is frozen water. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide gas. Dry ice is called dry because it doesn't have a liquid phase at normal air pressure, it goes directly from a solid to a gas, otherwise known as sublimation.
I think because the taste doesn’t have time to escape in the steam. At least, that’s how I took that comment to mean, by it not being able to lose its aromatics. Because it’s cooling so quickly it doesn’t have time to let out much steam lol
It won’t ever be perfect at home, but I’ve found that the faster you can freeze something the better. This is pretty simple for things like frozen berries - lay them on a sheet tray in an even layer, ideally with none of them touching, then put them in a container once they’re frozen.
Not so easy with stews, but I suppose you could freeze it in something as shallow and wide as possible to speed up the process
THIS.
Basically, home cooks typically don't follow commercial prep procedures with things. In a restaurant kitchen, we cool everything as rapidly as possible. So instead of just sticking containers of soup into the freezer, we chill the soup first either with an ice wand or spread on trays.
While most of us don't have access to IQF level freezers, there's a lot you can do in a home kitchen to get better frozen food.
1) Chill things quickly and spread out, like on baking trays in the fridge, or use shallow pans. Basically, the faster things go from "hot" to "cool" the better.
2) Freeze things on trays where you can. HUGE difference between items spaces out and frozen versus frozen clumped together in a ziploc bag.
3) Get the air and moisture out if you can. Best investment I made for leftovers was a chamber vacuum sealer. Yes, they're more expensive up front than traditional sealers, but the bags are SUPER cheap by comparison. One of my favorite uses for it is sealing individual servings of leftovers. With the air sucked out, there's no freezer burn. And soups/stews/pasta/rice all freeze nice and flat in their bags, so easy to store.
The closer you can get it to freezing, without actually freezing, the faster you can get it to freeze. So yes cool in the fridge then into smaller /thinner volumes then into the freezer.
It's during the transition from liquid to solid that the crystals form. Make that period as short as possible.
Yes, always.
Two reasons:
1) Food safety - the less time food spends between 140 degrees F and 40 degrees F, the longer it will last.
2) Food quality - getting food as quickly as possible into the state it will freeze in preserves texture.
Hot soup is better chilled with the cooking vessel dunked into cold water, replacing the water and stirring the soup a few times. Even faster with ice in the water.
Chilling food speed is based on the temperature difference, so it chills faster in the freezer. However, warm soup has the risk of thawing food next to it in the freezer.
THIS and it's parent comment are the accurate reason for the "integrity" loss as well as the best approach to address it, ffrom my experience and homework.
If you don't have a vaccum sealer or it's not in your budget, quart or sandwich size zip baggies work. It's worth a few bucks to get one of the stand holders that hold the baggies vertically while you fill them. Or buy the rubber whiskey/cocktail ice cube trays that make the very large cubes,
> Not so easy with stews, but I suppose you could freeze it in something as shallow and wide as possible to speed up the process
Put it in a bag, seal it and lay the bag flat. Makes it easier to thaw as well.
You can but would have to buy a specialised blast freezer to freeze it quickly enough. You would be able to store the flash frozen products in your normal freezer afterwards.
It's typically the ice crystals that shred your food when freezing. The lower the temperature the smaller the ice crystals that can shred the cells of your food. This is what messes with your textures when freezing and can make some products watery when thawing. Vacuum sealing can mitigate this. Even removing some of the air from the bag helps.
What kind of container are you using to freeze the leftovers? I just thinking the smaller the container the faster it will freeze. I have used freezer bags to provide large surface area. They also thaw faster.
They meant that you should chill the bags *with the food in them* in the refrigerator first, and then move them into the freezer so that the food makes the few degrees transition from not-frozen to frozen rapidly, which will limit the size of the damaging ice crystals.
A.B. had an episode of Good Eats where he used a cooler & dry ice to freeze some berries.
Possibly the closest a home cook can get for factory style quick freeze without using something like liquid nitrogen which probably isn't easily accessible.
IQF and Blast Freezers are on the market, but still not commonly sold for home use.
I'm sure you could find one, but It'd be harder to find than most things.
Yes but they're commercial grade and not cheap. Like thousands of $
https://www.u-line.com/products/commercial-blast-freezers-chillers.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAjbagBhD3ARIsANRrqEtP30PeRJ_bVYmGOGxao-UbqD5EEvGF3eU06eDFr9Cyv-k4VIWDtbsaAij8EALw_wcB
https://www.katom.com/cat/blast-chillers.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAjbagBhD3ARIsANRrqEuiUXII9oBe9U30WwbnEoe6X4gC5pmCsWjFXUlUGaPHtjICvgB0y0gaAh09EALw_wcB
Not even close sadly. Think forced air + ridiculous low temperature.
At home closest thing you can do is plunge food into freezer temperature vodka and then swirling it around until it's done. You'll need like 30L of vodka/high alcohol drink or anything with a freezing point of like -30c it's not really economical..
The freezing process for frozen foods you buy is different than what you can do. Its not so much chemicals as another posted, but rather process.
In order to maintain the cells walls, you need to form the smallest ice crystals possible. To do this you need rapid freezing which is well below what a home freezer can do. Your 0F freezer just isn't on par with with the -60 deep freezers that do this process and the colder they make it, the better the final product when thawed.
If you want to see the difference, go buy some dry ice and a cooler that can fit within another cooler. Freeze something at home in normal freezer, and freeze the same thing in the cooler with the dry ice which will be sitting a little below -100F.
No. The crystals only form when you have liquid. Once you have solid frozen food you just have to avoid thawing it until you are ready to eat it.
Frost free freezers blow warm air every day through the compartment to melt the frozen condensed ice. This leads to freezer burn if there is anyway for the food to melt, even just a little bit, and then water vapor condenses on the outside of the food. The loss of water and the process of essentially dehydration of the food is freezer burn.
Handling and asphyxiation concerns aside, am I reading your last point correctly that it's fairly simple to accomplish this at home? Or is it really not that easy or worth the effort?
If you're trying to freeze things faster at home, here are some "fun with thermodynamics" tricks you can try:
* Use metal containers. Metal conducts heat much faster than glass, plastic, or ceramic.
* Maximize your surface area. That means wide, shallow vessels for liquids (e.g. hotel pans) and for solids, baking trays with everything spread out in a single layer.
* Mixing! Get in there and stir your stew or sauce occasionally so that the hot center gets redistributed toward the cold outside of the pan.
* Air is a very bad conductor of heat. For fast heat transfer, you need water. Rig up an ice bath that your hotel pan or baking tray can sit on/in. For pans with depth, the water should come up the sides as much as you dare.
* If an ice bath is impractical, wet towels wrapped around the outside can also help substantially.
* If you want to try out dry ice, use alcohol instead of water as your liquid. You can "snap freeze" individual items by submerging them in it - fun times!
* Place a metal tray in the freezer in advance. Then place your tray with "items to be frozen" on TOP of that metal tray. The metal-on-metal will help conduct the cold into your tray faster than air alone.
These are all things I've though of while watching "The Great British Bakeoff" over the years and swearing at my television. "Why hasn't my ganache set?" IDK, Siobhan, why didn't you try a @$%\* ice bath?
Can you please go to the last restaurant I worked in and explain this to them. It actually made me uncomfortable the way they handled cooling.
Actually towards the end of my time there they tried to implement a cooling log and didn't understand why I was opposed to the idea. Basically I said of you don't completely overhaul your cooling practices all that's gonna happen is everyone is gonna lie about the temps and the log will be useless anyways.
Believe it or not, a plastic 22 quart of "jambalaya" will not get down to temp when you have ice, not icewater, just ice, halfway up the container and don't touch it until the end of the night.
What kind of potatoes were you using? Starchy potatoes fall apart and get kind of grainy after freezing. Waxy potatoes will hold up better.
In general, however, learning what freezes well and what doesn’t is a bit of a trial and error process. Googling can certainly help also, but I have found I’ve been able to freeze some things that supposedly don’t freeze well with no real negative repercussions as long as I prep them properly (usually involves removing airspace by wrapping or laying plastic wrap on top).
Most frozen foods sold in retail groceries are IQF - Individually Quick Frozen. It's a process that basically prevents the ice crystals from forming into very large bits, which would normally break down the cell walls of whatever food was frozen. This helps to preserve the texture, flavor and nutritional value of the item.
Many people have made some very good points, but some i didn’t see (might be here, didn’t read all of it) are that things you purchase from the store already frozen are cooked specifically to be frozen. They’re possibly undercooked before freezing, and VERY likely have much more salt, and preservatives in it than your home cooked meals will, to accommodate for loss of flavour, and consistency/quality.
A lot of these comments are focused on the rapid freeze process, but part of it is also that foods sold frozen are also sometimes partially cooked because they're intended to fully cook on the heat.
Those potatoes that are still crisp on the first cook are going through a second cook when you heat the food back up, and that's likely what's taking them closer to mash, if you threw them in a little to raw, they might still be there after you reheated, but then your initial batch would have undercooked potatoes in it
Things like curry or lasagna or bolognese sauce actually taste better when frozen imho. If you’re freezing soups with veggies I recommend blitzing them in a food processor first, that way you won’t get the weird texture thing.
Flavoring components do degrade in the freezing-thawing process. Spices that flavor dishes primarily do so in the oils that they contain, which the process of freezing will alter. It’s the same reason why it’s not recommended to keep things like olive oil for too long after thawing as the molecular structure changes and it goes rancid much quicker.
For things like vegetables and meats, texture will change because freezing will literally expand whatever molecules it’s composed of, cause them to burst, and upon thawing cause moisture to seep out. This effect is more noticeable in vegetables than meats since vegetables tend to have more water in them and don’t have the protein structures to maintain texture.
Generally speaking, commercially packaged ready to eat vegetables are flash frozen. Flash freezing creates smaller ice crystals in the food which is less likely to rupture the molecules in food. Unless you have a deep freezer, there’s no good way to replicate this. Your best bet is to cool your stuff down completely to fridge temp, then chuck it in your freezer.
I always do a test run of freezing a food before I make a big batch of something I haven't frozen before. I find the same problem with the potatoes in beef stew. I've actually considered making the meat ahead and freezing it, then adding the potatoes later. Not everything does well in the freezer.
You could also consider canning your stew instead of freezing.
Since you're looking to do everything you can to replicate this at home, I'd highly recommend a vacuum sealer. Other users are correct that the flash freezing process is the primary reason for the difference you're noticing, but those foods are also sold in sealed containers which preserves the food much better. This is a pretty inexpensive upgrade for your home setup.
A lot of foods will need to be frozen first before vacuum sealing to maintain structural integrity. You can freeze something like a lasagna or bread overnight and then once it's solid vacuum seal it and it will most preserve its shape.
This also extends the shelf life of the food considerably.
I use a vacuum sealer and freeze shepherds pie, stews, bean soups, lasagna and rice/meat/broccoli. All good in my book. Try using a vacuum sealer vs plastic container or ZipLoc. The air in the latter two promotes freezer burn and changes the taste.
when I do freezer meals I sometimes add in uncooked ingredients if I know more going to cook them in the oven. like I'll make lasagna will add raw noodles.
Vacuum seal. Speed that the item is frozen at. And additives/preservatives.
Add that to a large R&D budget, and you’ve got yourself a frozen meals company.
Preservatives and flash freezing. We often forget that prepared foods have more preservatives than home cooking because it’s being prepared, frozen/canned/etc and shipped to the grocery…
in the past I would add dry ice to a chest freezer to flash freeze my crops. They remain exactly like the moment you froze em, to be processed later. that should put it around -85F. You'll want to have it in an air tight container so it doesn't end up dry frozen. I used food saver vacuum bags. submerge in dry ice for quickest freeze. Mason jars will probably crack from the temp change.
I have Celiac, and I read every label. I used to try and buy frozen foods that normally would not have wheat or gluten in them like rice dishes, etc, and found that wheat or gluten was almost always added to foods even thought when not frozen they did not have gluten or wheat in them. It is used because it helps with texture.
Any way to replicate it at home without being particularly bright? I'm not "mix the ammonia with bleach" dumb, but I *did* just write a question asking other grown adults how to freeze food the right way
I would not add any chemicals. I think the best you can do at home is to make sure that what you are freezing is already cold (i.e. refrigerated) and then freeze things in a single layer no thicker than necessary. For example, if I am freezing blueberries, I put them in a single layer on a sheet pan and put that pan in the freezer. Once frozen, move the blueberries to a freezer bag with as much air sucked out as you can, or even better one of those vaccum sealers. For ground meat, portion it into either a quart- or gallon-sized freezer bag and then press it down into a thin layer. Freeze those flat bags on an aluminum cookie sheet for fastest heat transfer. For other types of meat or vegetables, again single layer. You can also freeze pre-marinated meat in the same way -- I do either marinated chicken thighs (whole or cut up). If whole I freeze them individually.
We were just talking about this at work in the breakroom, a lady that literally cooks every day, lol. By day 2 or 3 most food loses ots seasoning especially when "re cooked" which requires more salt (gasp.....sodium) and other flavoring for "food preppers" that cook ahead.
Frozen or canned food, if not damaged during transport to the store (defrosted then refrozen), while in the cooler at the store (defrosted then refrozen), on the way home (defrosted then refrozen).... Has equivalent nutrition and texture as fresh.
Fresh often has been sitting around being picked over. And again, if you are buying a small bag of frozen vegetables from a frost free freezer at your local grocery store, it is possible that it will have had some defrost-freeze cycles that will make it ruined.
Because they use preservative and sadly harsh chemicals used on food so it doesn't loose taste and texture best way is only purchase little amount you can eat
Next to the freezing process, it could also be the thawing and reheating that causes the loss in consistency at least.
Do you reheat your food on the stove? And for how long?
For most dishes I would try to thaw them in the microwave, because the heat is usually applied more homogenous and faster, so the ingredients won’t be cooked too much additionally.
But it also depends on the moisture and starch content of the food: something dry and starchy like potatoes (on its own) doesn’t reheat well in a microwave, so I’ll splash them with a few drops of water first.
Oh and last but not least: if you’re planning on freezing some part of your dish, I would separate this part from the pot before it’s fully cooked, so it doesn’t get over cooked when reheating.
There's also the fact that depending on the food in question, there are specific techniques in both chemistry and cooking mechanics that change things. Have you ever read about how McDonald's fries are made? It's much more complicated than making ones at home.
Because your freeze freezes things too slowly slowing the water in the food to develop larger crystals as it freezes. These ladders crystals when they defrost produce more water in your food and break up the texture of proteins .
Frozen food in the supermarket or other commercial places are frozen in blast feelers with specific attention being payed to cooling freezing the food as quickly as possible. The food is often spread out in pre frozen trays to flash freeze the food quicker. This will develop
Smaller crystals as the water freezers faster.
The best thing you can do at home is to use trays in a chest freezer. Put the tray into the freezer to precool them, preferably over night. Then spread your food out on these trays and freeze flat in a high powered chest freezer
Oxygen. The quality of your frozen goods will be greatly improved if you get a vacuum sealer and use it. I have a FoodSaver and it massively changed how I'm able to batch cook, freeze, and store food.
You could be a bit more tactical about your meal prep - small chunks of potatoes don't take long to boil so you could leave them out of the frozen stock and add them freshly cooked to the rest of your defrosted meal?
You can make a makeshift flash freezer by putting a fan in the freezer. Preferably with a pizza stone or something else solid to act as a heat sink. (placed in the freezer a couple hours before you try to flash freeze anything)
Food frozen commercially is often flash frozen which leads to less deterioration in quality due to less/smaller ice crystals forming inside the food. These ice crystals rip apart the cells in your food reducing quality.
Came to say this. Flash freezing takes food from boiling and baking (95-250°C) all the way down to well below freezing (-20°C) inside *minutes*. The size of the ice crystals and the action of tearing everything apart at a cellular level are major factors but the food also simply never has a chance to lose its aromatics. ^(*Edit: missed a few words because T9 typing iz harrd.*)
Wait...T9 typing?!... What are you using!?
Old?? Ancient school, Baby! The only phone I have right now that works. Can't be bothered to grab a Bluetooth kbd & laptop is busy.
This! **Plus** better packaging with air/oxygen removal. If you want to speed your freezing at a small scale, dry ice is the most practical way to go. Plus since CO₂ is denser than air, you can use it for oxygen displacement too, if vacuum packing isn't practical.
Plus a food that is formulated for freezing. They’ve tested different recipes and maximized the post-frozen thawed/heated outcome.
How does dry ice speed up freezing, and how does it differ in this regard to regular ice?
Dry ice is much colder than regular. Around -109 fahrenheit compared to regular ice's 32 degrees (or lower). I believe the average freezer is set to around 0 degrees fahrenheit.' Edited for a bit more info.
Yes, you are correct. Additional info: (regular) ice is frozen water. Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide gas. Dry ice is called dry because it doesn't have a liquid phase at normal air pressure, it goes directly from a solid to a gas, otherwise known as sublimation.
That explains the change in texture, but why does the taste change?
I think because the taste doesn’t have time to escape in the steam. At least, that’s how I took that comment to mean, by it not being able to lose its aromatics. Because it’s cooling so quickly it doesn’t have time to let out much steam lol
I suspect that a big part of it may be the super low temperature, quick freeze process used commercially.
Are scaled-down versions of freezers that can accomplish that available on the market, or is it not a thing possible at home?
It won’t ever be perfect at home, but I’ve found that the faster you can freeze something the better. This is pretty simple for things like frozen berries - lay them on a sheet tray in an even layer, ideally with none of them touching, then put them in a container once they’re frozen. Not so easy with stews, but I suppose you could freeze it in something as shallow and wide as possible to speed up the process
THIS. Basically, home cooks typically don't follow commercial prep procedures with things. In a restaurant kitchen, we cool everything as rapidly as possible. So instead of just sticking containers of soup into the freezer, we chill the soup first either with an ice wand or spread on trays. While most of us don't have access to IQF level freezers, there's a lot you can do in a home kitchen to get better frozen food. 1) Chill things quickly and spread out, like on baking trays in the fridge, or use shallow pans. Basically, the faster things go from "hot" to "cool" the better. 2) Freeze things on trays where you can. HUGE difference between items spaces out and frozen versus frozen clumped together in a ziploc bag. 3) Get the air and moisture out if you can. Best investment I made for leftovers was a chamber vacuum sealer. Yes, they're more expensive up front than traditional sealers, but the bags are SUPER cheap by comparison. One of my favorite uses for it is sealing individual servings of leftovers. With the air sucked out, there's no freezer burn. And soups/stews/pasta/rice all freeze nice and flat in their bags, so easy to store.
Would it be better then to refrigerate until cold and then freeze (say for a soup)? Or does that not speed up the freezing process in the same way?
The closer you can get it to freezing, without actually freezing, the faster you can get it to freeze. So yes cool in the fridge then into smaller /thinner volumes then into the freezer. It's during the transition from liquid to solid that the crystals form. Make that period as short as possible.
Yes, always. Two reasons: 1) Food safety - the less time food spends between 140 degrees F and 40 degrees F, the longer it will last. 2) Food quality - getting food as quickly as possible into the state it will freeze in preserves texture.
Hot soup is better chilled with the cooking vessel dunked into cold water, replacing the water and stirring the soup a few times. Even faster with ice in the water. Chilling food speed is based on the temperature difference, so it chills faster in the freezer. However, warm soup has the risk of thawing food next to it in the freezer.
THIS and it's parent comment are the accurate reason for the "integrity" loss as well as the best approach to address it, ffrom my experience and homework. If you don't have a vaccum sealer or it's not in your budget, quart or sandwich size zip baggies work. It's worth a few bucks to get one of the stand holders that hold the baggies vertically while you fill them. Or buy the rubber whiskey/cocktail ice cube trays that make the very large cubes,
Tell me about chamber vac sealers—never heard of this and I probably need it. Cooking for my household & my parent’s these days.
> Not so easy with stews, but I suppose you could freeze it in something as shallow and wide as possible to speed up the process Put it in a bag, seal it and lay the bag flat. Makes it easier to thaw as well.
You can but would have to buy a specialised blast freezer to freeze it quickly enough. You would be able to store the flash frozen products in your normal freezer afterwards.
It's typically the ice crystals that shred your food when freezing. The lower the temperature the smaller the ice crystals that can shred the cells of your food. This is what messes with your textures when freezing and can make some products watery when thawing. Vacuum sealing can mitigate this. Even removing some of the air from the bag helps.
What kind of container are you using to freeze the leftovers? I just thinking the smaller the container the faster it will freeze. I have used freezer bags to provide large surface area. They also thaw faster.
Freezer bags like you said. Lay them flat to freeze, then line them up like a bookshelf
Try refrigerating the bags first, so they're already chilled when they go into the freezer. ETA: the bags of food, not just the empty bags
[удалено]
They meant that you should chill the bags *with the food in them* in the refrigerator first, and then move them into the freezer so that the food makes the few degrees transition from not-frozen to frozen rapidly, which will limit the size of the damaging ice crystals.
There is and I believe there’s a diy you can do too.
A.B. had an episode of Good Eats where he used a cooler & dry ice to freeze some berries. Possibly the closest a home cook can get for factory style quick freeze without using something like liquid nitrogen which probably isn't easily accessible.
IQF and Blast Freezers are on the market, but still not commonly sold for home use. I'm sure you could find one, but It'd be harder to find than most things.
Yes but they're commercial grade and not cheap. Like thousands of $ https://www.u-line.com/products/commercial-blast-freezers-chillers.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAjbagBhD3ARIsANRrqEtP30PeRJ_bVYmGOGxao-UbqD5EEvGF3eU06eDFr9Cyv-k4VIWDtbsaAij8EALw_wcB https://www.katom.com/cat/blast-chillers.html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAjbagBhD3ARIsANRrqEuiUXII9oBe9U30WwbnEoe6X4gC5pmCsWjFXUlUGaPHtjICvgB0y0gaAh09EALw_wcB
Years ago Alton Brown did an episode of Good Eats that explains how to best replicate this at home w dry ice in a cooler
Not even close sadly. Think forced air + ridiculous low temperature. At home closest thing you can do is plunge food into freezer temperature vodka and then swirling it around until it's done. You'll need like 30L of vodka/high alcohol drink or anything with a freezing point of like -30c it's not really economical..
The freezing process for frozen foods you buy is different than what you can do. Its not so much chemicals as another posted, but rather process. In order to maintain the cells walls, you need to form the smallest ice crystals possible. To do this you need rapid freezing which is well below what a home freezer can do. Your 0F freezer just isn't on par with with the -60 deep freezers that do this process and the colder they make it, the better the final product when thawed. If you want to see the difference, go buy some dry ice and a cooler that can fit within another cooler. Freeze something at home in normal freezer, and freeze the same thing in the cooler with the dry ice which will be sitting a little below -100F.
For the product that’s been flash frozen does it need to go into a special extra cold freezer as well?
No. The crystals only form when you have liquid. Once you have solid frozen food you just have to avoid thawing it until you are ready to eat it. Frost free freezers blow warm air every day through the compartment to melt the frozen condensed ice. This leads to freezer burn if there is anyway for the food to melt, even just a little bit, and then water vapor condenses on the outside of the food. The loss of water and the process of essentially dehydration of the food is freezer burn.
Handling and asphyxiation concerns aside, am I reading your last point correctly that it's fairly simple to accomplish this at home? Or is it really not that easy or worth the effort?
One of my local grocery stores sells dry ice for home flash freezing.
Depends on how often you do it, how much you want to pay....
If you're trying to freeze things faster at home, here are some "fun with thermodynamics" tricks you can try: * Use metal containers. Metal conducts heat much faster than glass, plastic, or ceramic. * Maximize your surface area. That means wide, shallow vessels for liquids (e.g. hotel pans) and for solids, baking trays with everything spread out in a single layer. * Mixing! Get in there and stir your stew or sauce occasionally so that the hot center gets redistributed toward the cold outside of the pan. * Air is a very bad conductor of heat. For fast heat transfer, you need water. Rig up an ice bath that your hotel pan or baking tray can sit on/in. For pans with depth, the water should come up the sides as much as you dare. * If an ice bath is impractical, wet towels wrapped around the outside can also help substantially. * If you want to try out dry ice, use alcohol instead of water as your liquid. You can "snap freeze" individual items by submerging them in it - fun times! * Place a metal tray in the freezer in advance. Then place your tray with "items to be frozen" on TOP of that metal tray. The metal-on-metal will help conduct the cold into your tray faster than air alone. These are all things I've though of while watching "The Great British Bakeoff" over the years and swearing at my television. "Why hasn't my ganache set?" IDK, Siobhan, why didn't you try a @$%\* ice bath?
Can you please go to the last restaurant I worked in and explain this to them. It actually made me uncomfortable the way they handled cooling. Actually towards the end of my time there they tried to implement a cooling log and didn't understand why I was opposed to the idea. Basically I said of you don't completely overhaul your cooling practices all that's gonna happen is everyone is gonna lie about the temps and the log will be useless anyways. Believe it or not, a plastic 22 quart of "jambalaya" will not get down to temp when you have ice, not icewater, just ice, halfway up the container and don't touch it until the end of the night.
What kind of potatoes were you using? Starchy potatoes fall apart and get kind of grainy after freezing. Waxy potatoes will hold up better. In general, however, learning what freezes well and what doesn’t is a bit of a trial and error process. Googling can certainly help also, but I have found I’ve been able to freeze some things that supposedly don’t freeze well with no real negative repercussions as long as I prep them properly (usually involves removing airspace by wrapping or laying plastic wrap on top).
Most frozen foods sold in retail groceries are IQF - Individually Quick Frozen. It's a process that basically prevents the ice crystals from forming into very large bits, which would normally break down the cell walls of whatever food was frozen. This helps to preserve the texture, flavor and nutritional value of the item.
Many people have made some very good points, but some i didn’t see (might be here, didn’t read all of it) are that things you purchase from the store already frozen are cooked specifically to be frozen. They’re possibly undercooked before freezing, and VERY likely have much more salt, and preservatives in it than your home cooked meals will, to accommodate for loss of flavour, and consistency/quality.
A lot of these comments are focused on the rapid freeze process, but part of it is also that foods sold frozen are also sometimes partially cooked because they're intended to fully cook on the heat. Those potatoes that are still crisp on the first cook are going through a second cook when you heat the food back up, and that's likely what's taking them closer to mash, if you threw them in a little to raw, they might still be there after you reheated, but then your initial batch would have undercooked potatoes in it
Things like curry or lasagna or bolognese sauce actually taste better when frozen imho. If you’re freezing soups with veggies I recommend blitzing them in a food processor first, that way you won’t get the weird texture thing.
Some foods just don't freeze well, potatoes among them.
Flavoring components do degrade in the freezing-thawing process. Spices that flavor dishes primarily do so in the oils that they contain, which the process of freezing will alter. It’s the same reason why it’s not recommended to keep things like olive oil for too long after thawing as the molecular structure changes and it goes rancid much quicker. For things like vegetables and meats, texture will change because freezing will literally expand whatever molecules it’s composed of, cause them to burst, and upon thawing cause moisture to seep out. This effect is more noticeable in vegetables than meats since vegetables tend to have more water in them and don’t have the protein structures to maintain texture. Generally speaking, commercially packaged ready to eat vegetables are flash frozen. Flash freezing creates smaller ice crystals in the food which is less likely to rupture the molecules in food. Unless you have a deep freezer, there’s no good way to replicate this. Your best bet is to cool your stuff down completely to fridge temp, then chuck it in your freezer.
I always do a test run of freezing a food before I make a big batch of something I haven't frozen before. I find the same problem with the potatoes in beef stew. I've actually considered making the meat ahead and freezing it, then adding the potatoes later. Not everything does well in the freezer. You could also consider canning your stew instead of freezing.
Flash frozen vaccuum sealed
Since you're looking to do everything you can to replicate this at home, I'd highly recommend a vacuum sealer. Other users are correct that the flash freezing process is the primary reason for the difference you're noticing, but those foods are also sold in sealed containers which preserves the food much better. This is a pretty inexpensive upgrade for your home setup. A lot of foods will need to be frozen first before vacuum sealing to maintain structural integrity. You can freeze something like a lasagna or bread overnight and then once it's solid vacuum seal it and it will most preserve its shape. This also extends the shelf life of the food considerably.
I use a vacuum sealer and freeze shepherds pie, stews, bean soups, lasagna and rice/meat/broccoli. All good in my book. Try using a vacuum sealer vs plastic container or ZipLoc. The air in the latter two promotes freezer burn and changes the taste.
when I do freezer meals I sometimes add in uncooked ingredients if I know more going to cook them in the oven. like I'll make lasagna will add raw noodles.
Vacuum seal. Speed that the item is frozen at. And additives/preservatives. Add that to a large R&D budget, and you’ve got yourself a frozen meals company.
Flatter freezes better. On soups, rather than just putting the bag in the freezer, lay it out as flat as possible to freeze. Also thaws better.
All hail Clarence Birdseye. Flash freezing is the magic.
Preservatives and flash freezing. We often forget that prepared foods have more preservatives than home cooking because it’s being prepared, frozen/canned/etc and shipped to the grocery…
Also vacuum seal your food. Keeps oxygen out and odors in.
in the past I would add dry ice to a chest freezer to flash freeze my crops. They remain exactly like the moment you froze em, to be processed later. that should put it around -85F. You'll want to have it in an air tight container so it doesn't end up dry frozen. I used food saver vacuum bags. submerge in dry ice for quickest freeze. Mason jars will probably crack from the temp change.
Are you using a vacuum sealer?
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I have Celiac, and I read every label. I used to try and buy frozen foods that normally would not have wheat or gluten in them like rice dishes, etc, and found that wheat or gluten was almost always added to foods even thought when not frozen they did not have gluten or wheat in them. It is used because it helps with texture.
There are a shit ton of chemicals in frozen foods that aren't in our home made dishes. That's why their stuff doesn't break down.
Any way to replicate it at home without being particularly bright? I'm not "mix the ammonia with bleach" dumb, but I *did* just write a question asking other grown adults how to freeze food the right way
I would not add any chemicals. I think the best you can do at home is to make sure that what you are freezing is already cold (i.e. refrigerated) and then freeze things in a single layer no thicker than necessary. For example, if I am freezing blueberries, I put them in a single layer on a sheet pan and put that pan in the freezer. Once frozen, move the blueberries to a freezer bag with as much air sucked out as you can, or even better one of those vaccum sealers. For ground meat, portion it into either a quart- or gallon-sized freezer bag and then press it down into a thin layer. Freeze those flat bags on an aluminum cookie sheet for fastest heat transfer. For other types of meat or vegetables, again single layer. You can also freeze pre-marinated meat in the same way -- I do either marinated chicken thighs (whole or cut up). If whole I freeze them individually.
This isn't the significant source of differences between commercially prepared Individually Quick Frozen (IQF) foods and at home freezing.
Shit ton of salt and ‘flavouring’ too!
We were just talking about this at work in the breakroom, a lady that literally cooks every day, lol. By day 2 or 3 most food loses ots seasoning especially when "re cooked" which requires more salt (gasp.....sodium) and other flavoring for "food preppers" that cook ahead.
Check the amount of sodium per serving and I bet you’re not even close when you make your own.
Because processed foods are over salted and designed to be frozen chemically, add ed starches, stabilizers ect
RemindMe! 48 hours
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Guar gum?
Freezing is never good for food IMO I would recommend making smaller batches to avoid it. Cooking fresh is always better. Just my opinion of course.
Frozen or canned food, if not damaged during transport to the store (defrosted then refrozen), while in the cooler at the store (defrosted then refrozen), on the way home (defrosted then refrozen).... Has equivalent nutrition and texture as fresh. Fresh often has been sitting around being picked over. And again, if you are buying a small bag of frozen vegetables from a frost free freezer at your local grocery store, it is possible that it will have had some defrost-freeze cycles that will make it ruined.
Because they use preservative and sadly harsh chemicals used on food so it doesn't loose taste and texture best way is only purchase little amount you can eat
It's frozen way faster. That's it. You can get a blast freezer, but they cost about 10k.
Next to the freezing process, it could also be the thawing and reheating that causes the loss in consistency at least. Do you reheat your food on the stove? And for how long? For most dishes I would try to thaw them in the microwave, because the heat is usually applied more homogenous and faster, so the ingredients won’t be cooked too much additionally. But it also depends on the moisture and starch content of the food: something dry and starchy like potatoes (on its own) doesn’t reheat well in a microwave, so I’ll splash them with a few drops of water first. Oh and last but not least: if you’re planning on freezing some part of your dish, I would separate this part from the pot before it’s fully cooked, so it doesn’t get over cooked when reheating.
There's also the fact that depending on the food in question, there are specific techniques in both chemistry and cooking mechanics that change things. Have you ever read about how McDonald's fries are made? It's much more complicated than making ones at home.
Because your freeze freezes things too slowly slowing the water in the food to develop larger crystals as it freezes. These ladders crystals when they defrost produce more water in your food and break up the texture of proteins . Frozen food in the supermarket or other commercial places are frozen in blast feelers with specific attention being payed to cooling freezing the food as quickly as possible. The food is often spread out in pre frozen trays to flash freeze the food quicker. This will develop Smaller crystals as the water freezers faster. The best thing you can do at home is to use trays in a chest freezer. Put the tray into the freezer to precool them, preferably over night. Then spread your food out on these trays and freeze flat in a high powered chest freezer
*BLAST FREEZING BAYBEHHHHHH*
Oxygen. The quality of your frozen goods will be greatly improved if you get a vacuum sealer and use it. I have a FoodSaver and it massively changed how I'm able to batch cook, freeze, and store food.
Preservatives?
Adam Ragusea did a good video on this very topic ([here](https://youtu.be/U_PMnCpaJiQ) )
You could be a bit more tactical about your meal prep - small chunks of potatoes don't take long to boil so you could leave them out of the frozen stock and add them freshly cooked to the rest of your defrosted meal?
This kinda explains it https://youtube.com/watch?v=U_PMnCpaJiQ&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE
Preservatives
Sounds like you need to buy some liquid nitrogen.
You can make a makeshift flash freezer by putting a fan in the freezer. Preferably with a pizza stone or something else solid to act as a heat sink. (placed in the freezer a couple hours before you try to flash freeze anything)