How to love your freezer!

By Milan Perera, Second-Year English

Take on board these top tips on how to best use your freezer to reduce costs and reduce food wastage.

With an online supermarket shop now only a few clicks away it seems we are neglecting the food we already have, leaving it to rot in the back of our fridge only to be replaced by a new food shop each week. The answer to this problem? Your freezer. An underused and undervalued appliance in your kitchen, knowing how to use it right could save you a lot of money and a lot of time.

Here is my quick take on how to make the most out of your freezer before you order your next shop and more fresh ingredients that are bound to go off, unused and unloved.

Veg:

Frozen cauliflower florets could be used to prepare cauliflower-cheese, frozen peas and broccoli can be the base for a delicious wintery broccoli, pea and mint soup and not forgetting frozen oven-cook chips: a student necessity. To freeze any leftover fresh potatoes, peel, boil until tender, drain and freeze once cooled; they can then be cooked straight from frozen. If a bag of spinach is beginning to go off at the back of your fridge, this can be put straight in the freezer as can any herbs too; finely chopping before freezing will make them much easier to use. Stir into curries or sauces straight from frozen.

Bread:

Got a loaf that you won’t be able to eat before it goes stale? Slice before freezing then toast straight from frozen. The same applies for pita, naan, bagels, crumpets; any bread product really!

Fruit:

If your bananas are beginning to brown, cut into chunks, freeze and blitz them into your favourite smoothie to make it extra creamy, or try making some n’ice cream by blending with a splash of milk until ice cream consistency. Frozen berries are far cheaper and more sustainable to buy then their fresh counterparts, blitz into smoothies, bake into muffins or microwave with your morning porridge.

Batch cooking:

The holy grail of student cuisine. Making dinner? Make more and freeze it. Don’t throw away the tupperware boxes your takeaway curry arrives in, instead, wash them out to be reused. Freezing meals in portions means you can have dinner ready in a matter of minutes when deadlines approach and cooking is the last thing on your mind. Make sure to label the lid with a sharpie before you freeze in order to avoid a game of freezer roulette. To defrost, leave at room temperature for a couple of hours or stick in the microwave on the defrost setting for a couple of minutes. Aim to eat things within six months.