Freezing

Freezers in the home have now become almost indispensable for many of us. A freezer holds in a suspended state many creative home-cooked foods and elements of dishes that when thawed and combined, form the bases of wonderful meals. It has been said that a freezer saves time. In fact, it re-distributes time. You cook ahead and freeze when you have time, for when you need to produce a good home-cooked dish and time is short.

Freezing is a form of modern-day preservation. Traditional methods of salting, smoking and preserving in sugars and vinegars for jams, jellies and pickles slowed bacterial decomposition but altered the taste, texture and colour of the original foods. Freezing, when it is done correctly using good-quality ingredients is perhaps the nearest we can get to preserving foods in their most natural state. You only get out of a freezer the quality you put in. The freshest fruit and vegetables, the best meat, the firmest fish and home-baked goods, when frozen correctly, will thaw almost exactly to the same state they were in fresh. If freezing obtained a reputation for producing poor-quality food it was probably because that is what was used in the first place, or the food was not frozen properly.