Freezing cooked/raw foods

_Username_

Sick of wasting food, cooking in small batches, and spending too much time cooking in general so I'm looking for some pointers for something I've actually never done: freezing food.

I generally get through 1kg-2kg of pork mince (sometimes beef mince) a week and it's obviously cheaper to buy in bulk. Freezing raw, is it best to just put approx 300g portions in some tupperware containers? And cooking from raw, do I need to defrost it in the fridge for a day first or can I cook from frozen (and just break it down as it heats up)?

I generally cook onions and peppers with the mince, so if I was to cook a large batch of this I take it that's it's okay to freeze. And going about reheating something like this, microwave really the only option?

No more basic questions for the moment.

Alf Veedersane

Portion out any meat before you freeze it. Back in college I bought a mass of chicken fillets and brainlessly lobbed them in the freezer. All froze together so I ended up having to defrost the lot together and that took forever. Not a disaster because it became a batch cooking exercise that ended up in the Guinness Book of Records.

If you want to defrost it in the fridge, do it overnight. And leave it in a dish/bowl to defrost or your fridge will be manky.

Or give it a good 8 hours on the draining board.

When you cook, put it in portions, let it cool and freeze the portions.

Daemonic

_Username_ wrote: »

I generally cook onions and peppers with the mince, so if I was to cook a large batch of this I take it that's it's okay to freeze. And going about reheating something like this, microwave really the only option?

This is the way to go IMO. Spend a couple of hours cooking the meals you'll have during the week saves a lot of time. I generally cook big pots of chilli, curry etc. and put them in tupperware containers, leave cool to room temp and pop them in the freezer. They'll last weeks or even months in there if you have a good freezer and a blast in the microwave to defrost and then heat through and you're all set.

2xj3hplqgsbkym

Freeze in portions in freezer bags, takes up less space.
Defrost in fridge overnight or in microwave on defrost or cook from frozen as you said (don't defrost at room temp for hours).

coffee_cake

I defrost in the microwave
freezing is great, ive loads of meat in there. especially handy when tesco are nearly giving it away because it's close to sell by date