Guilty as charged!  I’ve been known to get caught up in the hectic activity of day to day life.  Sometimes that means I’m passing thru a drive thru too many times and/or throwing away spoiled groceries I bought with the best intentions of preparing.  This conundrum leads me to my this latest blog entry … Think Ahead Cooking. I have vowed to improve, and after some history of being more successful at leveraging my food loot, I thought I’d pass along some tips I have found along my journey.

Dinner Time

The reality of life is we are all going to get unexpectedly busy or too tired to cook.  Stockpiling homemade frozen meals is a great way to take culinary control back during challenging times.  Not everything freezes and reheats well, but there are plenty of things that do.  Soups, sauces, and braised meats (meats cooked low and slow in flavorful liquids) are among my favorites.  Sometimes I’d even argue that when you freeze ’em and leave ’em, the flavors continue to marry, and they taste even better on round two.

• Soups:  Remember the french onion soup from my last blog entry?  Well, two individual portions of it went into the freezer and spared me from a trip to the drive thru this week.  As hunger struck one day, I popped them out of the freezer, ran the container under a little hot water to free the frozen delight, put it in a sauce pan, and heated on a low heat, covered, until it came back to its former deliciousness.   I also have some Mexican Chicken Soup that’s waiting in the frozen on deck circle.  I already had it one rainy Saturday afternoon, lunch a few days later, and I’ll have it again when a time crunch dictates.
• Sauces:  Homemade sauces are also great to have tucked away in the freezer for a delicious round two meal.  By now you might be getting the picture that foods with a lot of liquids and a ‘broken down texture’ handle freezing best.  Yep, you got it, they don’t dry out or get tough as easily.  When I make  homemade marinara, I usually cool down a portion of it and sock it away in the freezer immediately.  I have learned that I can only take so many tomato based dishes in a row, so better to preserve it at it’s best than a few days down the road.   I have also made it a habit to put pesto and fresh pasta from the farmers’ market straight into the freezer if I’m not planning to make them the day I get home.  That way if I have a change of taste a few days down the line, the food is still fit for eating when I am ready.
• Braised Meats:  I have also had great success freezing pulled pork in it’s braising juices.  On a tired night after work, I can just reheat the pork as I described for the soup above, and have slow cooked pulled pork sandwiches ready in about 20 easy minutes of reheating and assembling!

I’m also keeping a watch on food.com’s Once a Month Cooking recipes to get even more ideas on making pastas, casseroles, and rice dishes ahead.  When you take it to that level with those ingredients, you’ve got to do some additional modifications to slightly undercook some of the ingredients on Round 1 so when you heat them for the final heating, they don’t end up to be a mushy mess.  More to come on that endeavor.

Preserving your Loot

I also have been leveraging my freezer more and more to use every bit of my groceries.  As one of my favorite celeb chefs, Anne Burrell, says “you bought it, so use it”!

• Ginger:  It’s hard to make an Asian “take-in” dish without ginger, so keep your ginger fresh by peeling it in advance and storing it in the freezer (thanks Rachael Ray for that tip).
• Tomato Paste:  Have extra scoops of tomato paste leftover?  It freezes well and can be plopped into a soup or sauce straight from the freezer.  I usually store in 2 T. dollops.  Of course, there’s also tomato paste from a tube that inherently protects your paste,  but if you are using bigger quantities, you are probably using canned paste.
• Breadcrumbs:  What to do with the bread ends or bread you think is about to go bad?  Toast it, let it cool, then whir it in the blender for breadcrumbs.  Store in the freezer and pull them out when you need them.  They are so small they come back to room temperature in a heartbeat.
• Nuts:  The oils in nuts can cause them to spoil quickly.  The fridge  works well for keeping nuts fresh, as does the freezer.
• Bones, Shells, and Scrap Veggies:  OK, so I realize that many of you may not be into making your own stocks, but if you really want to make full use of what you’ve bought, store chicken bones and seafood shells in the freezer until a day you are ready to make stock.  Store scrap veggies (mushroom stems or the end of asparagus) or veg you don’t think you’ll get to in the freezer too for further seasoning your stock.

Well, I’ve got more ideas, but I’ll save those for a future post to keep you coming back 😉  I hope you to take one or two of these ideas and see if they help make your culinary adventures a bit easier!