Tag Archives: freezer

Leftovers. . . and second servings

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One of the banes of refrigerator maintenance is leftovers. I work hard to avoid them, but I’m often defeated in my efforts, especially when eating out. So often restaurant servings are HUGE, and, sucker that I am, I don’t just leave the excess on my plate.  I bring it home, tuck in into the refrigerator, and then likely at some too-far-in-the-future date I get an odoriferous reminder that I now have to do something with the leftovers, which are likely to be found in the back of the refrigerator. They will most likely be unidentifiable now, so they go into the garbage.

cat in refrigerator

lookin’ for leftovers

The obvious first step is to think carefully about bringing home restaurant leftovers: Will it reheat well enough that you really want to eat it?  After all it probably doesn’t make much difference when it gets thrown out–then or a week later. If I decide to tote it home (and I already know that the cat won’t eat it), then I need to label it, and be sure that it doesn’t end up in the back-most corner of the fridge.  I have used masking tape (which comes off easily–often too easily), Sharpies (which can be removed from some things with rubbing alcohol).  I recently found a suggestion to use dry erase crayons (which I didn’t even know existed).  Might be worth a try, but better yet for me would be to be much more judicious in what I put into the fridge as a “leftover”.

“Leftovers” from my own cooking aren’t as much of a problem, but I’m always looking for ways to use the bits and pieces of produce or the last part of that can of beans. I’ve got a handle on the bits and pieces of bags of frozen vegetables and even partially on the celery.  But there are still bits  and pieces….

The Cook’s Illustrated books on cooking for two and Joe Yunan’s book (see bibliography) is the cross-indexing of recipes that use the same ingredient so you have a suggestion for what to do with the other half  of that head of cauliflower.

I’ve found several tools to help reduce waste in single-serving cooking. First from the kitchn is an article titled What to Do With…? 75 Tips for Leftovers and Ingredients.  There is a long list of things from produce market, the refrigerator, and the pantry with suggestions of what to do with the extras. For a lot, the suggestions are “freeze it” which does not necessarily solve the problem–just moves it to some point in the future; however, there are some good suggestions.

The flip side of this is throwing away things that could reasonably be used. For some examples, see 10 Foods You Should Never Throw Away. I can agree with the cheese rinds and chicken bones, but here again, I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of just changing where you stash the leftovers. When you’re doing single-serving cooking you do need to consider carefully what you bring home and what you keep.  Also useful might be Top 10 Ways to Use Up Overripe Fruit.

Another article that is useful 15 Foods You Should Freeze in an Ice Cube Tray. There are lots of other things to freeze as “ice” cubes, and the put into zipper-lock bags for freezing.  Having these portioned out can make it easier to use them. One of the things I do with excess celery and carrots is to make mirepoix (soffrito) in a big batch, then freeze it in ice-cube trays. One or two cubes will be what you need for small-time cooking–and it cuts time from preparation, and should reduce waste!

Planning use as in having thought about possibilities for that second serving (no, not meal planning–I don’t do that), and shopping with single-serving cooking in mind should help. One way to manage what gets pushed to the back is to add a triage box to the fridge.  Triage  refers to the process or sorting, or assigning priority to something.  In the fridge it would be an eat-me-first box where you put things that have a short shelf-life, or perishables so that they don’t get pushed to the back of the fridge.

 

Refrigerator and freezer use

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Admittedly we need a stove in the kitchen, but we also need the refrigerator–and it’s probably the appliance that we misuse most often. When I stop and think about the times that I’ve had to clean out the refrigerator because something got “lost” back there and made its presence known in a rather aromatic way, I know I need to work on this problem–yes, I’m writing this because I have to clean out the fridge again. . . .

We don’t usually stop to think about the micro-environments inside. I know that I often just open the door and plop something in without much thought to where it would keep best.

Just recently I found a series of articles on the kitchn on using and maintaining the refrigerator for best performance.  I thought I’d share these–I know that I do misuse mine–and I suspect (hope) I’m not alone.

Of course, then there is the freezer which can be wonderful, or a trap cooking intentions. Again, I’m facing the necessity of cleaning out the freezer after the recent kitchen disaster which was directly attributable to me just opening the freezer door and chucking stuff in–I think I need to stop and think about why I’m putting something in the freezer, and make a huge effort at organization.

This is a list of main articles–within each, there are links to other useful tips for managing the cold spots in the kitchen. Now,  off to the kitchen to attack the fridge!

Cat in fridge

Vacuum pack it!

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Reynolds Handi-Vac and bagWe all know about “freezer burn” that can happen when you put opened bags of stuff back into the freezer.  I’ve found something that ameliorates that. We’ve all observed that products that are vacuum-packed hold much better than those that are not. So–when I put opened bags vegetables back into the freezer, I use a clever gadget from Reynolds®.  Lest you cringe thinking expense–I’m not talking about the “big” vacuum sealing system.  I’m talking about the little hand-held pump and bags with a valve on them.

This is the Reynolds® Handi-Vac® system (reported to be discontinued, but still available from eBay and Amazon). It operates on AA batteries. For storing opened frozen products, I put the original bag, folded and air squeezed out into the vacuum bag, and vacuum! This is not as “hard” a vacuum as achieved with the counter-top vacuum sealing products, but it hides in a drawer and is inexpensive–no lost counter space which can be important.

vacuum sealed cornIt does help extend the freezer-life of opened packages of frozen products. If it’s something I use a lot of (e.g the petits pois, or “baby” peas that only come frozen–we’re ignoring canned), then I may buy the family size package and portion and vacuum those in serving size.  For the most part, I leave the veggies in the original bag–this way I can reuse the vacuum bags. For meats or seafood, I generally don’t reuse the bags. I just don’t feel I can be sure that they are sufficiently clean.

Here is a partial bag of frozen corn (another thing I like to buy in bigger packages). I confess that I’ve not done any scientific studies here, but using this seems to have decreased the number of times I dump a partial bag because of the freezer burn.

I’ve also discovered that using this really helps with the celery dilemma common to single-serving cooking: wash and cut celery into length that fit into these bags (you can also get bigger bags), wrap in a damp paper towel, and vacuum seal. It’s’ amazing how long it lasts that way. When you wish to freeze servings of big-batch cooking you can use these if there is not much liquid, but it can be tricky. What I usually do for those is to put the food into a “light” storage zipper-lock bag, squeezing out most of the air, and then into one of these.  Again, I can reuse the bags; they seem to stand up to reuse quite well.

corn in vacuum sealed bagMy only experience has been with the Reynolds® Handi-Vac® though I’ve noted that Ziploc® and FoodSsaver® both now have hand-held systems (as well as the counter-top). Just from trawling the internet, I can’t tell if the Handi-Vac can be used with the Ziploc® or the FoodSsaver® bags; there’s contradictory information (what a big surprise).  Of note, the Ziploc® pump is manual rather than battery operated, and I would suspect that it will create a less strong vacuum than battery-operated pumps.

There’s an advertisement for an adapter for the Handi-Vac® pump to be used on Ziploc® bags. It’s called the “ReynLock Adapter™”; I’m NOT including a link because of the contradictory information I’ve found, and the price of the gizmo, and I’ve not used it so I don’t know anything other than the advertisement. (See My Opinion page, please).

Updates when I have more information because I will be looking for another product to do this.  Maybe I’ll be lucky and the Ziploc® bags will work!