4x tips to prevent that annoying freezer burn
Ice crystals can form on food you store in the freezer. They aren’t harmful to your health, but they can completely ruin the taste. That’s called freezer burn, and we’re happy to tell you how it happens—and, above all, how you can try to prevent it!
Although it doesn’t mean your frozen food has gone bad, freezer burn definitely affects the taste and texture. You know that musty, slightly rancid taste vanilla ice cream can have after you’ve tried scraping off that layer of ice crystals? Or that taste of frozen green beans that just isn’t right? That. You don’t want that.
What is freezer burn and how do you prevent it?
Freezer burn occurs when moisture evaporates from food and—because it’s still in the freezer—freezes again on top in the form of ice crystals. This happens especially when there is quite a bit of space, allowing air to circulate around the food. The moisture can ‘collect’ there and then freeze again. The food itself therefore dries out somewhat, and there’s a good chance that its taste, texture and color will also become less pleasant. To prevent it, you want the food to come into contact with as little air as possible. These tips will help you do that:
Wrap it up snugly
The simplest way to prevent freezer burn is to freeze the food in the smallest possible package. Whether it’s a jar, container or bag, you want it to fit as snugly around the food as possible.
Double layer
If you want to freeze baked goods, go for two layers of protection. For example, first wrap those incredibly delicious brownies tightly in plastic wrap, then put them in a freezer bag or aluminum foil. You can also best store frozen food bought in plastic packaging this way once it has been opened: first seal a half bag of peas that may be left over after making a wonderful pasta primavera with a rubber band before putting it in an extra freezer bag in the freezer.
Protect your ice cream with your life (or a layer of parchment paper)
Mega annoying, right, when you plan to eat the second half of your Ben & Jerry’s Netflix & Chilll’d and there’s a nasty layer of ice crystals all over it? We previously wrote about the best way to store ice cream, but placing a suitably sized round of parchment paper on top is also a really good idea.
You can learn to vacuum-seal
This works incredibly well, of course: simply pull everything tight in a vacuum-seal bag. But then you do need to have a vacuum-sealing machine at home, and because you have to cut off the edge each time, you can’t really reuse the bags properly (unless you keep working with smaller and smaller options). In any case, plastic bags aren’t exactly a sustainable storage solution. So do your very best to reuse them, especially when, as in the double-layer protection example, the bag is the outer bag that doesn’t come into contact with the food.
In other cases, sturdy resealable bags can often be rinsed or washed, turned inside out to dry, and then reused. Aluminum foil can also easily be used again! Since we don’t consider vacuum-sealing the most sustainable solution, we’re mentioning it last.
Read also:
- Chef’s favorites: 10 things chefs like to keep in the freezer
- How long can you keep food in the freezer?
- People find the strangest things in their freezers and all of Twitter goes wild
