Frozen meat

You know, I get used to watching Gordon ramsay yelling at people for using frozen meat, and I assume I can tell the difference too. Indeed there's a notable difference if the main star of the dish is the meat. However, school is coming up and I want to make sure I have at least five (ideally ten) dishes ready that I can make for lunch on demand, for convenience, I'd also want to be able to use frozen meat. As such, I'll be using the meat mostly for stuff like ragu or meatballs, where it's already diced up small and coated with a number of other flavors. In this case, is frozen meat acceptable?

Obviously I could just try it for myself but I'm a bit lazy right now :p

Derek Xiao
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13 Comments

MMH
MMH August 9, 2016
Derek- I like to grill meat & freeze individual portions so you preserve that flavor. Works great during finals week!
 
Dina
Dina August 9, 2016
We freeze EVERYTHING in my house, including raw and cooked meat (usually ground meat like you describe if it's cooked already). It will turn out just fine. I especially like to freeze the filling for things like stuffed peppers or zucchini, then after it is thawed it is super easy to just fill up your veggie shell and pop it into the oven for 20 minutes. If you sub out rice for a whole grain like freekah, you won't lose too much texture there either.

The other thing that makes it easier is to portion everything out into sandwich or quart sized plastic bags, and flatten out the contents then freeze. That will defrost for you way quicker than a big lump of food.
 
pierino
pierino August 9, 2016
I think the best approach here is to freeze the meat in separate packages for each meal. You can label zip lock bags for this. FDA guidelines are to keep meat frozen for no more than one year. Don't add the coatings etc. until you are ready to use it. If your freezer gets a lot of opening and closing you might want to shorten that time to 90 days and no more than 6 months.
 
Derek X.
Derek X. August 9, 2016
Oh heck yea, I definitely won't even keep them longer than three weeks.
 
PHIL
PHIL August 9, 2016
Pulled pork/ chicken , chili, taco meat are all good freezing options
 
Smaug
Smaug August 9, 2016
Really no problem, especially for the type of uses you mention. If you're going to start worrying about Gordon Ramsay yelling, you've a lot of worrying ahead of you.
 
Derek X.
Derek X. August 9, 2016
Haha yea
 
Susan W.
Susan W. August 9, 2016
Of course it's acceptable. There is nothing wrong with using frozen meat and especially when you are talking about meat that is an ingredient of a dish and not the star of the plate. I cook far more food than I need and freeze the leftovers every time I cook. I buy chicken, beef, pork and lamb on sale and freeze it for another day.
 
Derek X.
Derek X. August 9, 2016
Thanks, I did have this nagging sensation that it was quite abnormal for people to always to cooking with fresh ingredients and herbs, but I kind of pushed it aside because it's summer right now and I can afford taking a two minute drive to the grocery store every day or so.
 
Susan W.
Susan W. August 9, 2016
I think it's great that you're spoiling yourself with Summer cooking and when it's time to hit the books, you'll cook differently. Then you have breaks in school to look forward to. It's also very commendable that you are a college student and cooking real food!
 
Derek X.
Derek X. August 9, 2016
Well, not quite. I'm actually going into 12th grade next year, school lunch was just too unbearable for me to keep eating it XD. I'm cooking from Gennaro contaldo's youtube channel and Marcella hazan's essentials of classic Italian cooking right now. Everything has been pretty good, I just need to get better technique and judging skills in general, but it all comes with experience so no hurry.
 
Susan W.
Susan W. August 9, 2016
Now I'm even more impressed!!
 
Derek X.
Derek X. August 9, 2016
haha thanks!
 
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