storing food

Tube

so I would like to cook all of my food for the week in advance. Tell me if this method is feasible.

1. Grill up 7 days worth of chicken breasts which have not been frozen
2. Steam a bunch of vegetables
2. Measure out the food and put it in tupperware, then put 5 days worth in the freezer and two days worth in the fridge
3. remove frozen food from freezer as necessary and leave to defrost for 24 hours before cooking

Is this healthy and feasible? Also how does red meat react to freezing/storing after cooking?

starmanbrand

I would probably cook twice a week instead of freezing cooked food.

It is not good for food to be in the "temperature danger zone" for such a long time (Cooling from hot to frozen and then thawing to be reheated and eaten). It increases the chance of foodborne illness. At least thats what ServSafe told me.

Cook four portions of stuff on monday. Eat until thursday.

Friday, cooked up the rest. This will allow you to make something nicer for the weekend so you don't get tired of the diet.

If you have a microwave or steamer, you can cook up a whole bbq of chicken and steam a bunch of veggies in under 25 minutes. 50 minutes a week for cooking isnt that bad.

EDIT- Also, if you are willing to take the increased risk of illness (And by illness I pretty much mean an upset stomach. You probably wont get something horrible) the freezing will create a poor texture in the protein. Heating it again will dry it out. So you will be eating crappy quality food. This goes both for chicken and red meat.

Kivutar

It's not something I personally would do, but I'd say it's certainly feasible.

As to red meat, most sausage (beef or pork) sold in the US is precooked. Red meat isn't going to react any differently than freezing chicken, turkey, etc.
Go nuts.

Seriously though, cooking isn't that time-consuming and it's a lot more satisfying to eat a fresh meal in my mind.

Serpent

I used to do cook 7 days worht at once. it worked ok.

After awhile, it got pretty blah. I found it was easier to measure/portion out 7 meals, but keep them uncooked, and then only cook 3-4 days at once. Cooking/freezing/thawing created some pretty blaaaah food. Freezing/thawing/cooking worked much better.

ASimPerson

I have a related question. Let's say I buy your run-of-the-mill chicken breasts down at the store, put them in individual bags, and freeze them.

How long will they keep in such a state?

mts

i think so long as you only thaw once you will be fine, you will lose quite a bit of texture though. one thing you could try is to give em a quick grill or saute but that might defeat the purpose of cooking at once. you could invest in a vacuum sealer they seem to work better than normal freezer bags


personally i usually make casserole type stuff to freeze for another day

yotes

Freezability depends on the kind of vegetable, in my experience. Old broccoli is garbage, but carrots, beans and cauliflower can handle it decently well, they only get a little bit rubbery.

I have a related question. Let's say I buy your run-of-the-mill chicken breasts down at the store, put them in individual bags, and freeze them.

How long will they keep in such a state?

Two months at least, just make sure to seal the bags well.

starmanbrand

ASimPerson wrote: »

I have a related question. Let's say I buy your run-of-the-mill chicken breasts down at the store, put them in individual bags, and freeze them.

How long will they keep in such a state?

Ok, so. Buy the chicken. Take it home. Wash it really well under running, cold water. Get all the nooks and crannies. Dry them VERY well with paper towels. Place them in individual bags. Get as much air out of them as you can. Freeze.

By freezing them they lose some internal texture, but they are still edible. The real problems come from freezer burn making them all grainy and gross and ew. Keep them in a low, back portion of the freezer.

They should keep for any reasonable length of time. I would probably still eat them six months from now, if it came to that. But if you are saving chicken in your freezer for any longer than two or three months...you should buy less.

ceres

I can always tell in the texture if meat's been frozen after it was cooked. My mom started doing this when I moved out, and it was a little off-putting after a while. She still does it and doesn't seem to mind (although she can tell it's better fresh), but to me it loses so much that I don't usually bother to do things this way.

I don't think it will actually hurt anything, you just lose a lot of flavor.

Now, if you're just talking about freezing the steamed vegetables and raw meat and cooking the meat with each meal, the veggies will be a bit on the 'mush' side of the spectrum when thawed, but the meat will be fine. I freeze all my raw poultry.

poshniallo

White meat freezes and defrosts much better than red meat. Frozen beef is a bit nasty.

The time-scales are fine so long as the chicken was not frozen before. Buy fresh, cook, freeze.

A microwave would be better but so long as you defrost in the fridge it should be groovy.

My worry would be nutrition - I'm no scientist, but that sounds like an invitation to scurvy.

And yeah, I'm sure it won't taste very good.

PirateJon

I did this. Undercook the veggies.

The Cat

My flatmate does this, it works fine. That said, some things freeze better than others. Casseroles/stews/curries freeze the best, don't even bother trying with anything stirfried.

I can't help but think that for the puny amount of work that goes into 'grilled meat portion plus steamed veggies', its not worth even bothering to freeze. That's like 20 minutes of cooking time a night. you're really not saving any labour by freezing. At best, cook 2 meals worth at once and shove half of what you cook in the fridge for the next day, that'll halve the effort required. You could even chop up several days' worth of veggies and store them raw in tupperware without a problem. It'll work for anything except onion, potato, tomato, and squishy things like zucchini, so long as they're not dripping wet when you put them into the containers.

The Cat

ASimPerson wrote: »

I have a related question. Let's say I buy your run-of-the-mill chicken breasts down at the store, put them in individual bags, and freeze them.

How long will they keep in such a state?

three to six months. Freezers used to have a little diagram inside them with the recommended freezing time for different things, or it'd be in the manual. So long as the bag is airtight it'll be fine. I store all my meat in portions like that.

Delzhand

What you might consider is a vacuum sealer instead of tupperware. That way you can just drop a bag into some boiling water and wait a few minutes. It's a bit of an initial investment, but it makes reheating things easier.

supabeast

Chicken freezes fine. Red meat and vegetables tend to get pretty gross after freezing and thawing.

EggyToast

If this is only for 1 week, I'd skip the freezer entirely. I regularly cook meals at home on Sunday and end up eating at work for lunch on Friday. Sure, it's not as fresh & tasty as the day I cook it, but most foods will last the 7 days once cooked with no problem at all. I also will grill up chicken breasts and then save them a few days in the fridge, so I can chop them up & used grilled chicken in other dishes made during the week. Similarly, I *always* buy a pack of chicken breasts, use one and then freeze the rest. They last months, although I usually go through them in a couple weeks.

Note that any chilli, stew, soup, or other "mix" of foods will taste *better* the longer they're in the fridge. I often cook chilli and have only a small portion that night, because it tastes really good the next few days.

Anyway, yeah, about 5-7 days should be no problem with cooked food.

Monolithic_Dome

Make sure you let everything cool to room temp before you stick it in the fridge. Shoving a week's worth of hot food into the fridge is a good way to spoil whatever else is in there.

DeShadowC

One of the big things is reheating in the microwave or whatever, make sure the chicken gets to its either 165 or 175 its been too long, before eating.

Djeet

Make sure you let everything cool to room temp before you stick it in the fridge. Shoving a week's worth of hot food into the fridge is a good way to spoil whatever else is in there.

This goes against most of what I've heard regarding food hygiene. Prepared food (particularly meat) should be refrigerated immediately after you're done with it, it has to do with reducing the reproduction rate of any possible food contaminants: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/299126_healthrail11.html and http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/html/food_hygiene.html

I'd second the vacuum saving of food if you want to keep it more than 3 days. Removing all the air from the bag allows the food to stay fresher longer (either in the fridge or the freezer). If you don't want to invest in a vacuum storage system but want to see if there's something to it, Ziplock now has bags available at the supermarket that can have all the air removed with a pump. I wouldn't use the Ziplock system with moister foods that might be okay in a dedicated vacuum-bagging/canning system.

Monolithic_Dome

well fuck me. I'm usually Mr. Snopes "hey that's not true you half wit," and here I am repeating urban legend as fact.


It's all over the web, too. The general consensus seems to be "It's OK but if you have a lot of hot food break it up into smaller containers"

Which, as it turns out, is exactly what Tube is gonna do.

Tube

I don't know about the science of it but last week I put hot food in the fridge in tupperware and the next day it was rotting

Djeet

Is your fridge properly cooling, because that's wrong (hot food -> fridge 1 day -> rotting yuck).

Edit: Well "warm" food I mean; putting hot food in fridge (especially a crowded one) aint a great idea.

EggyToast

I regularly cook a meal, put the remains in a big tupperware, put it in the fridge, then nuke it the next day, put the leftovers from that back in the fridge, and then nuke and eat the rest the day after that.

The only things that don't really work in the microwave is seafood & steak. And they're not unedible, just unappetizing.

Kalkino

I'm with Cat. A handful of rice and some vegetables are dirt easy to cook, and both of which will last long if stored correctly. Most meats you choose to have with this won't add much cooking time