Everyone who is just starting out with freezer cooking has lots of questions. Going into something, you might not know what will work and what won’t work. Many first-timers worry about ruining their meals. I will not lie to you, it can happen. However, there are some preventative measures you can take to ensure that you don’t waste a meal and have it turn out bad or worse yet, not turn out at all.
The first thing there is to learn is that mistakes do happen. Even after you’ve been doing it a long time. I once made this delicious pasta casserole following the directions to a tee. It looked so delicious as I placed the tinfoil over it and prepped it for the freezer. About two weeks later I took it out for dinner and popped it right into the oven. It smelled heavenly and everyone was so excited to try it.
When we sat down at the dinner table, my youngest asked “Isn’t this pasta?”. “Yes, I replied as I took my first bite.”, “Well, where are the noodles?”.
Well, apparently it helps to not cook the noodles all the way when you are going to be freezing them and then reheating them. Although I had never had the problem in the past, the noodles had almost completely vanished in my pasta casserole – apparently they disintegrate. There were still some, but not as many as there had been when I stuck the dish in the freezer. But hey, it still tasted delicious and it took me about ten minutes to boil up some more pasta to stick into the casserole.
From that experience, I learned that preparing the pasta the night I am serving a dish, or not cooking the noodles all the way when getting ready to freeze a dish, seems to work a lot better. No disappearing act!
Please see Freezer Cooking: What If I Ruin It (2) for more information on saving your meals from disaster.
For more great articles on freezer cooking, please see the freezer cooking section in the frugal living blog or for some excellent recipes to prepare, visit the food blog.