- 6 hours ago
A freezer can save you far more food and money than most kitchens ever use it for, and these 20 freezer tricks show exactly how. Elias Yoder explains how to keep bread, bananas, milk, cheese, eggs, butter, herbs, ginger, garlic, tomato paste, berries, beans, rice, leftovers, and even flour in better shape for longer storage.
The video also covers what not to freeze, how to blanch vegetables, why flat freezer bags matter, how to label everything, and why a full chest freezer holds cold better than an empty one. It is a practical home food preservation guide with Amish homestead wisdom, energy-saving tips, and real kitchen habits shaped by off-grid living and solar power.
If you want freezer organization ideas, food storage hacks, meal prep shortcuts, and simple ways to reduce waste, this long-form practical guide is packed with useful advice. It is especially helpful for anyone looking for freezer meal planning, grocery savings, chest freezer tips, and everyday food preservation that actually fits real life.
The video also covers what not to freeze, how to blanch vegetables, why flat freezer bags matter, how to label everything, and why a full chest freezer holds cold better than an empty one. It is a practical home food preservation guide with Amish homestead wisdom, energy-saving tips, and real kitchen habits shaped by off-grid living and solar power.
If you want freezer organization ideas, food storage hacks, meal prep shortcuts, and simple ways to reduce waste, this long-form practical guide is packed with useful advice. It is especially helpful for anyone looking for freezer meal planning, grocery savings, chest freezer tips, and everyday food preservation that actually fits real life.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Go and open your freezer. I will wait.
00:03If it looks like most, there is a bag of something in the back
00:07gone white and leathery that nobody can name.
00:10Half a bag of peas.
00:12A lot of cold, empty air.
00:15And meanwhile, in the same kitchen, every week,
00:18brown bananas and a heel of bread and a bunch of limp greens
00:22go in the bin.
00:24That freezer is the best tool for saving food that has ever been
00:28put in a house, and in most houses it is being used as a cold
00:32cupboard for things people have given up on.
00:35Now, before anybody writes in, let me say where I stand.
00:40I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
00:46Our cellar has no machine in it and never will.
00:49It runs on the cold of the ground, the way it has for a hundred years.
00:54But out in the shop, there is one chest freezer, on its own panel
00:59and its own battery, and it is there for one reason.
01:03When we butcher, there is more meat at once than any cellar can hold.
01:08My community allows that.
01:10The stricter orders do not, and a great many families rent a freezer locker
01:15in town instead, which does the same job.
01:18I am telling you plainly, so nobody thinks I am pretending otherwise.
01:23And here is why that freezer taught me more than it would teach most people.
01:28When your power comes from a battery the sun filled,
01:32a freezer that runs half an hour longer than it needs to
01:35is not a few cents on a bill.
01:37It is the difference between making it through three gray days and not.
01:42So every trick on this list that makes a freezer work less, I learned because I had to.
01:49I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
01:54The book is the long version.
01:56If you want it, it is there.
01:58I will not mention it again.
02:01My grandfather taught me the principle of it long before anybody on our place owned a freezer,
02:07in the ice house.
02:09Every January the men cut ice off the pond in blocks,
02:13and packed it into a little building with thick walls,
02:17the blocks stacked tight, and sawdust packed all round them.
02:21And that ice lasted into August,
02:24in a building with no power at all.
02:28One summer I was sent in to fetch a block, and I took my time about it,
02:32and I left the door standing open while I chipped at the edge of the pile.
02:36He came in, and he did not tell me to shut the door.
02:40He had me put my hand into the sawdust at the front of the stack by the door.
02:45It was soft and damp, and the ice beneath it was slick with water.
02:51Then he had me dig my arm in deep, into the middle of the pile.
02:56The ice there was hard and dry, and so cold it burned.
03:01He asked me what the middle had that the front did not.
03:05It had ice all round it.
03:08The front had a door.
03:10Cold keeps cold.
03:13Open the door, and you have let summer in.
03:16He told me a thing that day I did not understand for years.
03:20He said the ice house did not make any cold at all.
03:25It only kept what the winter gave it.
03:28The walls did not keep the ice.
03:30The ice kept the ice, and the walls only kept the summer out.
03:36A freezer is a little ice house that makes its own ice.
03:40But it keeps it exactly the same way,
03:43and every trick worth knowing about one comes back to that.
03:47That is the whole of this list.
03:51Now the twenty.
03:53Twenty.
03:54Bread.
03:55Slice the loaf before it goes in.
03:58Bread goes moldy on the counter in four or five days,
04:02and keeps for months frozen.
04:04And sliced, you take out two pieces at a time,
04:08and toast them straight from frozen, and nobody can tell.
04:13Nineteen.
04:13Bananas gone brown are not rubbish.
04:17Peel them, break them into chunks, freeze them in a bag.
04:21They mash up better than fresh for baking,
04:24and frozen chunks whizzed with a little milk make a thick, cold drink
04:29that no child in our house has ever refused.
04:33Eighteen.
04:34Milk freezes.
04:36Pour a cup off the top first, because it swells and will split the jug.
04:42Thaw it in the cold, shake it well, and it is fine for drinking and perfect for cooking.
04:49Cheese freezes too, but grate it first.
04:52A frozen block goes crumbly.
04:55Grated comes out ready for the pan.
04:58Seventeen.
05:00Eggs freeze, but never in the shell, which will crack and let the air in,
05:05and make a mess of the whole shelf.
05:07When eggs are plentiful, crack them one to a cup in a muffin tin,
05:11stir each one lightly, freeze them, then tip them into a bag.
05:16You have single eggs for baking all year.
05:19With laying hens in the spring, there is always a glut, and this is where it goes.
05:25Sixteen.
05:26Butter, when it is cheap.
05:28It freezes beautifully in its own paper, and keeps a good while.
05:32Nuts belong in there as well.
05:34It is the oil in a nut that turns it bitter in the pantry, and cold stops that.
05:40My wife keeps the kitchen, and I do not meddle in it, and the next four are hers.
05:46Fifteen.
05:47Herbs in oil.
05:49You buy a bunch of parsley for one dish, and the rest turns to slime in a week.
05:54Chop the whole bunch, pack it into an ice cube tray, pour a little oil over each cube,
06:00and freeze.
06:01Drop one straight into a hot pan.
06:05Fourteen.
06:06Ginger and garlic.
06:07Throw a knob of ginger in whole, and grate it frozen, skin and all,
06:12and it grates finer than fresh.
06:14Peeled garlic cloves freeze fine in a small bag.
06:19Thirteen.
06:20Tomato paste.
06:21Every recipe wants one spoonful, and the tin holds six.
06:26Drop the rest in spoonfuls on a sheet of waxed paper, freeze them, and bag them.
06:32Leftover broth, buttermilk, and the like go the same way.
06:36And a plain word on what does not freeze, since people learn it the hard way.
06:41Lettuce and cucumbers, and anything you eat raw and crisp, come out as a limp, wet rag.
06:49Potatoes raw go strange and grainy.
06:52Fried food goes soggy.
06:54Mayonnaise and custards separate.
06:56They are not unsafe, only unpleasant.
07:00And knowing it saves you filling a freezer with things nobody will eat.
07:05Twelve.
07:07Freeze things spread out first, then bag them.
07:09Berries dropped straight into a bag freeze into one brick.
07:14Spread them on a tray in one layer, freeze them a couple of hours, then pour them into a bag,
07:19and every one stays separate, so you can shake out a cup full.
07:24Peppers, meatballs, beans, anything.
07:28Eleven.
07:29Blanch your vegetables.
07:31If you have ever frozen green beans and thawed them into gray mush, this is why.
07:36There is something in a fresh vegetable that keeps working, even in the cold, and ruins it slowly.
07:43A minute or three in boiling water, then straight into ice water, stops it.
07:48Two minutes of work, and it is the difference between a freezer full of good food and one full of
07:54disappointment.
07:55And squeeze the air out of every bag.
07:58Lay it flat and press from the bottom up to the seal before you close it, or close it all
08:04but an inch,
08:05push the air out, and finish the seal.
08:08Air is the enemy of everything in a freezer.
08:11It is what makes freezer burn, and it is what makes the ice crystals that spoil the texture,
08:17and every bag with the air pressed out keeps better and takes less room.
08:23Now halfway, and two things everybody believes that are costing them food.
08:28Freezer burn is not spoilage.
08:31It is air.
08:32Air touching the food dries the surface into that white, leathery patch.
08:37It tastes of nothing, and it is safe.
08:40Cut it off and cook the rest.
08:42The cure is less air, which brings me to the second half.
08:46And frozen food does not go bad on a date.
08:51Kept solidly frozen, it stays safe.
08:54What slips over the months is the texture and the flavor, not the safety.
09:00That piece of meat from eight months back will not hurt anybody.
09:03It may be a little dry.
09:05The one condition is that it stayed frozen the whole time, and I will come back to that.
09:1210. Cook once, eat twice.
09:16Soup, stew, chili, a pan of something baked.
09:20Making double costs you almost nothing extra.
09:24Eat one, freeze one.
09:26On a night when everybody is tired, dinner is already made.
09:30And cool it before it goes in.
09:33A pot of hot stew set straight into a freezer warms everything around it and makes the machine
09:39run for hours.
09:41Let it cool, then chill it in the refrigerator, then portion it and freeze it.
09:46Do not leave it sitting out on the stove all afternoon to cool, though.
09:50Get it cold within a couple of hours, and a pot set in a sink of cold water does that
09:56in no time.
09:589. Cooked beans and rice.
10:01Dried beans cost a fraction of tinned, but nobody wants to soak and simmer on a weeknight.
10:08Cook a big pot on a quiet day and freeze it in two-cup portions, which is about one tin's
10:13worth.
10:14Rice reheats better from frozen than from the refrigerator.
10:198. Freeze bags flat, then stand them up like books.
10:24Lay a bag of soup or sauce or beans flat on a tray until it sets into a thin slab.
10:31Slabs stack, slabs stand upright so you can flip through them, and slabs thaw in an hour
10:37where a brick takes all day.
10:40And on a battery, this matters more than it sounds.
10:43The less you have to dig and rummage with the lid open, the less cold you let out.
10:48Flat and filed means you find it in five seconds and shut the lid.
10:557. Label everything.
10:57A bit of tape and a pencil, what it is and the date.
11:01Old at the front, new at the back.
11:03An unlabeled bag in January is a mystery, and mysteries get thrown out.
11:09Most freezer waste is not spoilage at all. It is forgetting.
11:13And keep a list on the lid of what is in there. We keep ours on a slate.
11:19You look at the list, you know what you want, you open the lid once and take it.
11:24That habit alone saves our battery more than anything else I do.
11:28And put the date on it in a way you will read.
11:31Not the day you froze it only, but the month you mean to have it eaten by.
11:36Most things want eating inside a few months to be at their best, meat a little longer,
11:42and a date telling you when to use it gets used where a date telling you when you made it
11:46gets ignored.
11:496. The Scrap Bag.
11:51One bag in the freezer for onion ends, carrot peelings, celery tops, the bones off the plates.
11:58When it is full, into a pot with water, simmered two hours, strained.
12:04That is broth, made out of what you were going to throw away.
12:08And the same bag of scraps is worth knowing about if you keep chickens,
12:12because a good deal of what goes in it they will eat gladly instead,
12:16and what they will not eat goes to the compost.
12:20Between the broth pot, the hens, and the heap, very little leaves our kitchen as rubbish.
12:285. Freeze flour, corn meal, and oats for three or four days when they come home.
12:34Those little moths that turn up in the pantry very often come home already in the bag as eggs too
12:40small to see.
12:42A few days frozen kills them before they hatch.
12:45One outbreak means emptying the whole cupboard, and this costs nothing.
12:51Four, and this is the one that matters most to a man on solar.
12:56Keep the freezer full.
12:58Remember the ice house.
12:59The ice in the middle kept because it had ice all round it.
13:03A full freezer works the same way.
13:06Every frozen thing in there holds cold and helps keep its neighbors cold.
13:11An empty freezer is mostly air, and air holds almost no cold at all.
13:17So every time the lid opens it falls out and the machine has to make it all again.
13:22So if yours is half empty, fill the gaps with jugs of water.
13:26They freeze and they hold the cold like a block of pond ice.
13:31When the freezer fills up with food, take a jug out.
13:34In summer they are free ice for a cooler.
13:38And a full freezer stays frozen roughly twice as long when the power fails as a half empty one does.
13:45Around two days full, around one day half full, if nobody opens the lid.
13:51And while we are on keeping the cold in, four more that matter a great deal if your power is
13:57a battery,
13:58and help anybody's bill besides.
14:00A chest freezer holds its cold far better than an upright one.
14:05Cold air is heavy and it sinks.
14:07Open the door of an upright and the cold pours out onto your feet like water from a tipped bucket.
14:14Open the lid of a chest and the cold mostly stays down in the box where it belongs.
14:19If you are buying, buy a chest.
14:22Put it somewhere cool.
14:24A freezer in a hot kitchen, or in the sun through a window,
14:28works twice as hard as one in a cool corner.
14:31Ours is on the north side of the shop, out of the light.
14:35But mind the other end of it too.
14:37Some freezers are not built to sit in a garage that goes well below freezing in winter,
14:42and they misbehave.
14:44Look at what yours says before you put it out there.
14:47Do not put a great load of warm food in at once.
14:50Ten pounds of fresh meat going in together makes a freezer run for hours to pull it down,
14:56and the food nearest it goes soft while it does.
14:59Put it in a few packages at a time over a day or two,
15:03spread out against the walls where the cold is,
15:05and put the new packages in only once the old ones are hard again.
15:09And keep the frost down.
15:11A thick coat of ice on the inside walls works like a blanket between the cold and the food,
15:17and the machine has to work harder through it.
15:21Defrost it once or twice a year, on a cold day,
15:24with the food packed tight together in a cooler,
15:26and blankets over it while you do.
15:303. An ice cube tray is for everything but ice.
15:35Leftover coffee, lemon juice, the last of a tin of cream, pesto in summer,
15:41baby food if you have little ones.
15:43Buy three more trays. They cost a dollar.
15:472. Thaw it right and know the refreezing rule,
15:52because this is where people either waste food or take a real risk.
15:57Thaw meat in the refrigerator overnight,
16:00or sealed in a bowl of cold water if you are in a hurry.
16:03Never on the counter all day.
16:06The outside warms up long before the middle has thawed,
16:10and warm meat sitting out is how a family gets sick.
16:14And if meat thawed in the refrigerator and your plans changed,
16:18you can freeze it again. It is safe.
16:21The texture suffers a little, and that is all.
16:24People throw out good meat because somebody told them refreezing is dangerous.
16:29It is not, as long as it stayed cold.
16:32The same rule governs a power cut.
16:35If the freezer failed and the food still has ice crystals in it,
16:39or it is still refrigerator cold, it can go back in.
16:43If meat has been sitting warm for more than a couple of hours, it goes out.
16:48And I would not argue with yourself about it.
16:51Put a cheap thermometer in the freezer, and you will never have to guess.
16:56You want it at zero or below.
16:59And one, the one that saves the most.
17:04Buy meat when it is cheap, all of it, and freeze it in portions.
17:08For us, that is butchering.
17:11A hog or a steer at once, cut and wrapped and into the freezer in meal-sized packages.
17:18Flat, labeled, and that feeds the family for months.
17:22For you, it is the meat counter.
17:25Every shop marks down meat near its date, a third or a half off.
17:30That date is about the refrigerator, not the freezer.
17:34The moment it freezes, the clock stops.
17:38So, when it is half price, do not buy one pack.
17:42Buy six, portion them, press the air out, label them, and freeze them flat.
17:49You stop paying whatever the price is on the day you happen to be hungry,
17:53and you start paying the lowest price the shop offers all month.
17:59There is no scheme in any of this, and nobody arranged anything.
18:03The money simply runs the other way.
18:07A family that throws food away buys it again, and the shop is glad of it.
18:13Frozen vegetables in a bag cost several times what they cost to freeze yourself.
18:18The delivery men are counting on your freezer being empty at six on a Thursday.
18:24None of them are hiding anything.
18:26It is only that nobody makes a living telling you to fill a milk jug with water
18:30and label a bag with a pencil, so nobody says it, and a thing nobody has a reason to say
18:37gets forgotten inside of one generation.
18:40And one last thing about the whole business.
18:43A freezer is not a place things go to be forgotten.
18:47It is a place things go to wait until they are wanted.
18:52The difference is only whether you know what is in there, and that comes down to a pencil
18:57and a list on the lid.
18:59So here is what I would have you do tonight, and it takes fifteen minutes.
19:04Take everything out of your freezer.
19:07Throw out the true mysteries.
19:09Put a date on everything else old at the front.
19:13Write a list and stick it on the lid.
19:16And fill the gaps with water jugs.
19:19Then pick one trick from today and start it this week.
19:23The scrap bag is the easiest.
19:26It starts with your next onion.
19:29Tell me in the comments what county you are in and how old your house is.
19:33And tell me this as well.
19:35What is the oldest thing you found in there tonight?
19:39Be truthful.
19:40I will not tell anybody.
19:42Next time I want to talk about the cord that freezer is plugged into.
19:47Because a freezer in a garage on a thin extension lead is one of the commonest ways a house catches
19:54fire
19:55when nobody is looking.
19:56And there is a plain way to know what a cord can carry before you trust it with anything.
20:03Cold keeps cold.
20:05Open the door and you have let summer in.
20:09The people who built this country with their hands knew that.
20:13And we are only just starting to remember it.
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