Freeze Food Flat for Easy Storage and Defrosting
When it comes to storing food for a long time, the freezer is one of the most useful tools in your kitchen, but it’s not as easy as tossing food into a container and letting it cool down. To help freeze food quickly and with minimal damage, freeze it evenly.
As Serious Eats’ J. Kenji Lopez-Alt explains in the video above (and in the article below), the two enemies of frozen food are air and time:
When food slowly freezes, large ice crystals form inside the food. These jagged crystals can damage cell structure, which in turn makes food soft and moist after thawing. Meanwhile, direct exposure to air leads to sublimation, which is a phase transition from solid ice directly to gaseous water vapor, which causes burns in the freezer.
To prevent both of these unpleasant results, Kenji demonstrates how to cook both semi-solid foods (such as ground meat and stews) and liquids by filling a freezer bag and gently squeezing out almost all the air. Once you have a flat bag of food, place it in the freezer until it hardens, then fold or fold neatly for the most organized refrigerator you’ve ever seen. Aside from meats and soups, this method also works well with grains and herbs , allowing you to break as much or less as you want to reheat.
When you’re ready to defrost your bounty, grab an aluminum skillet. Aluminum is an excellent conductor of energy, allowing food to defrost twice as fast as normal at room temperature, which means you don’t have to panic if you forget to put food in the refrigerator the night before.
The best and fastest way to freeze and thaw food | Serious food