Freezing food - cool down first?

corblimey

When freezing cooked food, there appears to be mixed messages out there about whether to let it cool down first before bunging in the freezer - some say yes, some say no, some say yes but not for longer than 30mins. Just wondering what the consensus here is?

the beer revolu

I would say cool it as quickly as possible.
If you put it in the freezer warm or hot it will compromise the temperature in the freezer.

rubadub

If you have decent bags, like oven bags, they can be water proof, you can put stuff in them and run them under a tap to chill quickly. Another trick is to wrap in tinfoil and stick on a oven rack in the garden, the breeze chills it really fast -as anybody who BBQs will tell you. I leave pizzas out the back like this to quickly cool.

Just watch out for birds & cats!

I used to make up batches of food to freeze for the coming month, like curries. I had a collection of old sauce jars and would fill them up, cap them and put them in a basin of cold water. This quickly chills them, give the water a swirl around and change it once or twice too.

corblimey

rubadub wrote: »

I used to make up batches of food to freeze for the coming month, like curries. I had a collection of old sauce jars and would fill them up, cap them and put them in a basin of cold water. This quickly chills them, give the water a swirl around and change it once or twice too.

How quickly we talking here? I put everything into plastic containers, so this approach would work better than going out into the garden, but I also don't fancy standing at my sink for a long time swirling a basin around.

rubadub

corblimey wrote: »

How quickly we talking here?

Maybe half an hour. You don't have to stand there swirling them, it just refreshes them with colder water once or twice, I also shake the jars so the middle hot bits touch the jar sides. Lifting out the jars and shaking them will move the water around enough in the basin. The more water in the basin the better as it will not heat up as much -though its a waste of water.

A mate of mine had a water butt out the back garden (big rain collector for watering plants). In the winter we dumped beer cans into it to chill them quickly, if the jars are not overly full they will float in the water, then you just rinse the dirty rain water off under the kitchen tap.

all_smilz

well i know what to do with my water butt now!