Remember the ice cube method for freezing homemade baby food? I've been doing a good bit of ice cube freezing since I started making baby food. I already try to portion and freeze a number of different foods (like spaghetti sauce and shredded cheese, or freezer meals like shepherd's pie or lasagna), but I've found that liquids work really well frozen in ice cube trays.
Some of my recent favorite freezes are juices (like the leftover pineapple juice from canned pineapple), and homemade stock. I've also used muffin tins to freeze stock. They are slightly more practical for me because I usually need at least a cup of stock at a time.
Sometimes the cubes need a little coaxing to pop out of the trays. I just use a paring knife and they come right out.
Recently, I decided to freeze some root beer that had gone flat. Incidentally, have you ever noticed that root beer is one of the best off brand sodas?
I'll use the root beer cubes the next time I make pulled pork. It won't matter that the soda is flat and we love the way pork tastes when it is cooked in root beer!
Do you have any creative ways to freeze food? Even though I'm not posting about food waste anymore I still believe that using up ALL the food you buy is one of the best (and simplest) ways to save money!
One thing I've been doing for the past year or two is freezing bananas when they are getting a little too ripe to eat out of hand. I slice them and lay them on waxed paper on a cookie sheet, then freeze them and put in a resealable plastic bag. They are perfect whenever we make our protein shakes, and if you use your food processor to combine yogurt and frozen bananas, you get yummy "frozen yogert" in a snap.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw your trays of frozen bananas I thought it was a genius idea...I do it all the time now too!
DeleteMy mexican rice recipe uses only 1 T of tomato paste so I put the rest in an ice cube tray and freeze for next time.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea! I've had extra tomato paste I just turned into spaghetti sauce, but it makes way more sense to save for later.
DeleteI haven't done too much ice cube tray freezing...but I recently acquired a chest-freezer that gives me lots of extra freezer space. So I expect I will be doing lots more freezing in the near future.
ReplyDeleteOoooo, I would love some extra freezer space!
ReplyDelete