5 Useful Things You Should Keep in Your Freezer

I learned from Marie Viljoen of 66 Square Feet that makrut lime is a better name for the lime leaves. The other word is a racial epithet.

My freezer is usually half full of jars of whey (leftover from making fresh mozzarella and provolone). I use the whey in place of water or buttermilk in baked goods. It lends an incredible depth of flavor and richness to just about any recipe. It can also be used to make fresh ricotta.

The other half of the freezer is packed with a variety of meats and game and a grizzly collection of bones and carcasses for making stock. Some pate brisee, roasted green chiles, a variety of fresh frozen veggies, nut flours, and masa. And ice cream sandwiches. There will always be ice cream sandwiches.

Melissa Clarks' NYT videos are wonderful. If you haven't seen them yet, I urge you to go there.

I keep Green Chili. Bought at the farmer's market at the height of the season. I roast it and then chop into small bits. They can then be broken off into the amount needed for the dish. Long green chili (Big Jim's) are frozen whole for rellenos. Easy and quick for great spice.

I LOVE the way you think....just like me! My freezer is a treasure trove and I never throw ANYTHING out. My family thinks I'm nuts and a pack rat, but they simply swoon over every repast. The tiniest bit of leftover "anything" can be just the flavor punch needed to perk up an otherwise "so-so" dish. This has always been the secret to my plate-licking-good food. Oh, and no bones, shellfish shells, or the tiniest bit of sauce, gravy or fat of any kind should ever be thrown out. Freeze coconut milk in ice trays then store the cubes in plastic containers. This is, quite simply, Cooking 101!

I'm not too sure what it is.......but I bet I bought it on sale.

All summer I cook fresh green beans with leftover (frozen in ziploc freezer bags) ham skin, fat and trimmings, and strain and freeze the broth afterwards - my freezer has a bunch of gallon ziploc bags full of this broth. It's a great start to a vegetable soup, and you don't need to add any meat. Also chicken stock from carcasses, ginger knobs bought fresh & frozen (easy to peel and shred or chop), rye, almond & whole wheat flours, bulk yeast, homemade tomato sauce, leftover tomato paste, bacon ends, parm rinds, bags of corn, peas & green beans, 1/2 pound cooked white beans, a number of bags of ham trimmings and two whole hambones, 3 kinds of chocolate chips, 2 pork tenderloins (sale), 8 chicken thighs (sale), 4 ice cream sandwiches (gluttony) and various packets of ground beef, ground pork and ground lamb.

Never give cooked bones from any animal to your dogs please. Very dangerous for many reasons! However, I do keep raw turkey & chicken necks frozen for the dogs to munch outside on hot days.

I cook 5 pounds of shallots on red wine and maybe some port until they are dry and freeze them in heaping tablespoon portions. They make almost any quick cook dish richer and more interesting and keep for a very long time. They would be great added to Melissa's tomatoes.

Nuts and flours, homemade chorizo and Italian sausage, excess pasta dough and pie crust dough, some smoked pork shoulder, several different BBQ sauces. Oh, and roasted, pureed squash of various types. Thanks for reminding me of all the great stuff I've already got!

Right now, 20 pounds of lard that I need to render. Chicken stock, frozen in pint jars. Pureed pumpkin, also frozen in pint jars. Various whole-grain flours.

Blanched and peeled whole tomatoes, whole tomatillos, homemade tomatillo sauce, leftover chicken noodle soup, pesto, periogies, pumpkin puree, frozen fruit and veggies. Some of the comments on this post have given me some great ideas.

Stocks of all kind, Falafel (i bake them straight from the freezer for lunch pita), various flours, nuts, pesto, soups, cookie doughs, pastry dough-puff, pate brisee, filo; bananas awaiting 4 friends for banana bread.

Right now, there are some things typically on hand and some are the by-product of Thanksgiving/other recent holiday festivities: turkey stock; 1/2 bag raw cranberries; bag of parmigiano rinds; raw walnuts, almonds and cashews; surplus Parker House roll dough (to be repurposed for Xmas dinner); flaked coconut; 1/2 package Chinese sausages; pancetta; brown sugar; assorted muffins (a few each blueberry/oatmeal, pumpkin/cranberry streusel & choc chip coconut); Kerry Gold butter (sale at Costco, bought a bunch); hamburger rolls; one chorizo; bag of frozen peas - always; ricotta gnocchi - always make 2X what's needed; partial bag of shrimp/pork/leek pot stickers. There are also various other odds & ends, but you get the idea.

Homemade stocks of all kinds: Chicken, beef, tonkatsu, 2 kinds of vegetable. Also Clarified Butter.

Bacon fat is always a great thing to have around!

Homemade chicken and vegetable broth, cooked beans, washed and cut up celery and leeks (just recently discovered this and it is a great tip!), lemon/lime juice and zest if I think my lemons and limes aren't going to make it till the next dish, soffritto frozen in oil in ice cube trays, my own vegetable bouillon paste mix, breadcrumbs, pesto, all sorts of fruit (some of which I froze myself from summer, some bought), buttermilk, heavy cream, leftover milk...I think that's most of the staples! I've learned you can pretty much stick anything in the freezer, which cuts down on a lot of waste.

cooked beans (chickpeas, black beans, white beans), washed and cut up celery, washed and cut up leeks, a very large variety of raw, unsalted nuts.

Whole lemons. They are easy to zest and easy to juice.

Parmesan cheese rinds, bread crumbs, pestos, pasta sauce.

Ice cube trays with pesto and sofrito

Anything and everything that has been roasted and all of the juices therefrom.

Bread crumbs from bread that we didn't get around to finishing, homemade stock in 2 cup portions and 2 T portions (i.e. the volume of my ice cube tray), bones for stock, pesto in the same 2 T portions, tomato sauce, portioned chocolate chip cookie dough.

Bags of D. Lebowitz roasted figs, all kinds of pestos, and leftovers - individual meat loaves, stuffed peppers, chili. Roasted cherry tomatoes, frozen chicken stock, and appetizers like gougers to pull out at a moment's notice.

Large cubes (frozen in silicone “trays”) of fig jam preserves to use in the Blue Cheese and Fig Savouries here on Food52. We’re not that crazy about fig jam on toast, etc. but it’s great to have in small, useful quantities for this special purpose; also, apricot jam, for brushing on fruit tarts.

Deli containers – 2 cup and 1 cup – full of faro, black/white/cannellini/cranberry beans, rice and rice blends, wild rice, quinoa; all are planned extras put aside as weeknight helpers.

Almond butter oatmeal cookies in frozen balls. Quick bread mini-loaves (banana, chocolate gingerbread pumpkin - recipe for the latter here).

Fresh frozen corn from last summer.

Homemade stock – beef, chicken, vegetable – quite a few quarts.

Leftover coconut milk.

Turkey schmaltz.

Homemade pie crust.

Holiday cookie dough for my second tranche of baking/distributing.

Half a box of diced Pomi tomatoes.

Homemade artisanal breads – half boule, baguettes, batard; all Tartine Bread levain based.

About every 2 months, I get my food processor out and blitz up aromatic pastes:

Thai curry paste,
lemongrass + scallions + garlic paste,
scallions + ginger + garlic paste,
cilantro + garlic + scallions paste, and
tamarind + cilantro + scallion or shallot + garlic paste.
These are a godsend for starting meals, re-purposing leftovers/freezer staples into new meals, making dal taste great, turning into quick sauces for roti wraps, etc.

For many of those uses, so I always (!) keep lemon juice and lime juice cubes.

Mint limeade syrup and rosemary lemonade syrup, in cubes. Perfect for last minute parties!

Kaffir lime leaves. Curry leaves.

That’s all I can think of now, but it’s fairly representative of what’s typically in my freezer, except for the holiday cookie dough. ;o)

I have a random collection of citrus peels that I planned to make citrus salt with, a bag of bones, a bag full of celery ends, carrot nubs, onions skins, parsley stems & leek greens for stock, a huge hunk of leaf lard that Cheese1227 is going to show me how to render, bags of Maine wild Blueberries, baggies of chipolte in adobo, kaffir lime leaves, an experimental sweet potato ice cream that I'll probably throw out soon, 2 pints of terrible thai soup that I thought I would fix one of these days, but will throw away , two empty ice cube trays and a bag full of Parm rinds.

Please don't give your dog(s) bones to chew. Bone chewing commonly causes slab fractures of one of the large chewing teeth ==> tooth extraction. It's a 3-rooted tooth, so not a fun situation for your wallet, your dog, or your veterinarian.

I always love to have homemade broth (frozen in 1 and 4 cup ziplocs), chicken feet to add to a chicken carcass for making broth, some sort of Chinese sausage or chorizo, usually some Trader Joe's frozen Chinese dumplings, for nights that my brain won't work, and froze vegetables for fried rice. I also love to keep homemade focaccia, but I'm all out and need to make a new batch. Perfect for sandwiches and dipping into soups.