9 Surprising Foods You Can Freeze to Prevent Waste

[Diamond_Dog]

https://www.realsimple.com/surprising-foods-you-can-freeze-7101093

(snip)

Grains like quinoa and rice

These food staples can be frozen cooked or uncooked. “Freezing cooked grains is a great way to have meals on hand when you don't have time to cook from scratch,” says Jeanette Kimszal, a registered dietitian in the New York metro area and food blogger with The Radiant Root. If you want to eat the cold grains in a salad, you should let them defrost first, she explains, but if you want to eat the grains warm, you can place the frozen grains in a little bit of water and heat them up.

Nuts, seeds, and nut flour

According to Kimszal, the fat in nuts and seeds can go rancid sitting on the shelf, so if you have a large bag of these foods and don't want them to expire before you get a chance to eat them, you can freeze what you don't eat. “The same can be said for nut flours,” she explains, adding that you should defrost the nuts and seeds before you consume them.

More at link

[Cairycat]

1. Thanks for the link

interesting info.

I like brown rice, but my husband and son don't, so I cook a bunch in my Instant Pot and freeze in individual portions.

I've frozen avocado to use in guacamole without much success - but I forget how useful it could be for other uses.

Anything with fat that could go rancid, not just nuts but whole grain flours, is best frozen if not used quickly.

[Retrograde]

2. The thread mentions freezing mushrooms

but if you live in a hot, dry climate it's easier to let them dry out (at certain times of the year the morning sun falls on my kitchen counter, and will dry small tomatoes and mushrooms in a couple of days. I sometimes take the tomatoes outside during the day to speed up the drying.) It's the old-fashioned way to preserve them. Once dried, they'll keep for months. Of course, you need temperatures in the upper nineties and humidity in the low teens for this to work.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. I have found that freezing cooked rice isn't the best thing to do.

They get a weird texture in the freezing and thawing process. It's rather subtle, and a of people wouldn't even notice or be bothered by it, but I am. Uncooked rice lasts forever, and takes almost no time to cook.

[wryter2000]

4. I keep pine nuts in the freezer

I grow basil and make a lot of pesto. Pine nuts are expensive at the store, so I get the big bag at Costco and keep it in the freezer. When I need pine nuts, I take out what I need and use them without defrosting.

[progree]

6. Well, I'm not ecstatic about freezing cheddar cheese

Hard cheeses, like cheddar and parmesan, are better candidates for freezing, and you can thaw them out in the fridge for a day to use them raw or cooked into a dish. Soft cheeses, like brie and ricotta, however, can have a harder time maintaining their texture, so you probably won't want to freeze them and then eat them as is. You can, however, freeze and reheat soft cheeses that are part of an assembled dish, like a lasagna or pizza.

I got a package of cheddar cheese slices. They are not individually wrapped slices, FWIW
https://www.shipt.com/shop/products/6885128

Anyhow the package says use in 3-5 days after opening. I don't want to eat that much cheese in a week or less, so I froze half.

When thawed, I find I can't just peel off one of the slices like I used to, it would break apart.

I think I'll stick to individually wrapped American cheese slices that I can leave in the refrigerator for a long time.