Chest Freezer tips?

dlockers

dlockers

dlockers

Soldato
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Hi folks,

Reasonably bought a chest freezer as my wife is about to pop (pregnant). We have "Cooks" meals nearby which are like Charlie Bingham. Planning on loading it full to make dinner easy.

But remember lots of old folk seem to love these things - what goes in them? It is huge. At the moment all I am thinking of is Callipos.
 
Any reduced packaged bread you find with a day or two on its use-by date will be fine for a couple extra days and normally survives pretty well after freezing. Bonus it takes up a good bit of space so you don't need to spend money on things actually worth freezing like whole pigs.
 
Mother in law when it all gets a bit too much.

They're great when batch cooking when you need an ingredient for a recipe which is enough for 16 portions and you wouldn't use it anywhere else. Also if you find the kids get attached to a certain type of chicken dinosaur or potato shape which is only available from one supermarket you can get a months worth to avoid potential meltdowns if they're out of stock on the next trip. Biggest risk there is if the child decides they no longer like dinosaurs and want chicken rockets instead.
 
iamdjdz said:
Any reduced packaged bread you find with a day or two on its use-by date will be fine for a couple extra days and normally survives pretty well after freezing. Bonus it takes up a good bit of space so you don't need to spend money on things actually worth freezing like whole pigs.
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:cry:

Can I put good dated loaf in here for longer than that? I am quite anti soggy bread, does it defrost ok?

Steeps said:
Mother in law when it all gets a bit too much.

They're great when batch cooking when you need an ingredient for a recipe which is enough for 16 portions and you wouldn't use it anywhere else. Also if you find the kids get attached to a certain type of chicken dinosaur or potato shape which is only available from one supermarket you can get a months worth to avoid potential meltdowns if they're out of stock on the next trip. Biggest risk there is if the child decides they no longer like dinosaurs and want chicken rockets instead.
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Trip to Costco may be on the cards then.

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What's the crack with stuff I buy fresh like chicken, mince etc? Is it just as good frozen? I see those bags of breasts and vom a bit in my mouth. Am I just being childish/of my generation?
 
I do 6 months of 3 meals a week food prep and shove in our chest freezer. We have a fortnightly food diary (saturdays off) based around the slow cooker. Anything that can't be slow cooked doesn't make the menu. Massive savings on time and money overall to be honest. Helps with a very busy household.
 
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Parents used to have a chest freezer you could have put a couple of people in - but used to get butcher to do a job lot of meat, back in the days of regular sunday roasts & bejams
(does your summerhouse wood supplier have a contact)

Don't remember freezer burn ... but I think the frost-free mechanism in some modern kitchen freezers (anyway) may contribute .. intentionally turns of fridge for some thawing of ice and fan too,
keep full for maximum efficiency, as they can be big consumers.

frozen bread is great for a little piece of toast ... but not, eat as fresh
 
platypus said:
I do 6 months of 3 meals a week food prep and shove in our chest freezer. We have a fortnightly food diary (saturdays off) based around the slow cooker. Anything that can't be slow cooked doesn't make the menu. Massive savings on time and money overall to be honest. Helps with a very busy household.
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Anything you can share diary-wise? Seems ideal.
 
dlockers said:
Anything you can share diary-wise? Seems ideal.
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This weeks food diary:
- Smoked Salmon Risotto
- Meatball Gnocci
- Camp Stew
- Chicken Dopiaza
- 3 bean chilli
- Pizza for the kids / Thai steak salad for us (not in the slow cooker!).
- Sunday Roast

Books I'd really recommend are
- the Pinch of Nom series - this is actually a set of dieting (of sorts - just replaces a lot of calorie stuff like oils and butters with 1 calorie sprays) book but they have a lot of good recipes and list which are easy to batch cook or suitable for the slow cooker.
- The clean eating slow cooker
- two chubby cubs the Cookbook - again this is diet aimed but not the reason we have it. They have some great slow cooker recipes in it (the meatball gnocchi is one of the best things Ive ever eaten).

Also, experiment! If you have a favourite meal, see if you can prepare it in advance and then slow cooker it. We don't slow cooker everything, but mon-fri almost always its a freezer or fridge bag that goes in the slow cooker at ~8am and cooks on low until 6pm. It took us a while to get used to it.

Saturdays are always prep night for the coming week (two meals still need prepping usually), and when I do a big freezer load it usually takes me a good 4 hours or so, but its become such an easy to follow routine that saves us a ton of time during the week, and it means we've always got something ready, rather than after a busy day at work just being tempted to do pizza and chips, or whatever, because we're tired and its easy.

Actually, if you want an easy to follow entry to food diarying, look at Whats for Dinner? by Sarah Rossi. The recepies aren't always brilliant but overall they are good. Perhaps more importantly though, where I think you're coming from is she diarises some meal plan weeks and shopping lists. So you can really easily follow along and get into the mindset of both diarising a food plan and a shopping list. This helps with both time saved on prep and things like that, but also getting into the habit of shopping only for what you need, so if you're after saving money as well as time its really quite good.
 
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dlockers said:
:cry:

Can I put good dated loaf in here for longer than that? I am quite anti soggy bread, does it defrost ok?
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In all seriousness yeah it's fine, we pretty much always buy enough loaves and freeze at least one, they defrost quick but if you're in a rush and find yourself stuck frozen bread toasts fine too.
 
I got ChatGPT to work out how many vienettas you could store based on different sizes of chest freezer as you haven't told us what you have - this assumes
the typical dimensions of a Vienetta box are about:

  • Length: 11 inches (27.94 cm)
  • Width: 4 inches (10.16 cm)
  • Height: 2.5 inches (6.35 cm)

    Let's calculate how many Vienettas can fit into freezers of 5, 9, and 16 cubic feet, given that one Vienetta has a volume of approximately 0.0636 cubic feet.

  • 5 cubic feet: approximately 79 Vienettas
  • 9 cubic feet: approximately 141 Vienettas
  • 16 cubic feet: approximately 251 Vienettas
    25 cubic feet:     approximately 393 Vienettas
Just want to add that I feel this seems likely to be a bit high but don't have a chest freezer nor Vienetta handy to test.
 
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PlacidCasual said:
Butchering a pig yourself is quite an achievable and fun activity
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