- 2 days ago
There’s a simple freezer rule that can save you from ruined meals: some foods freeze well, and others come back watery, mushy, or broken. Drawing on farm-kitchen experience and a story about ice from a Lancaster County pond, this narration explains why slow freezing creates large crystals that damage food texture and what that means in an ordinary home freezer.
The list covers what not to freeze, including salad vegetables, raw potatoes, shell eggs, hard-boiled eggs, fried foods, soft dairy, cream sauces, noodles in soup, mayo-based salads, tender herbs, and anything sealed in a full can, jar, or soda bottle. It also explains the one safety rule that matters most: never refreeze food that has warmed up. Along the way, it gives practical fixes like freezing in smaller portions, leaving headspace, using the right containers, and freezing herbs in oil for easy cooking later.
If you want a practical food storage guide, freezer tips, kitchen preservation advice, or a narrated homestead lesson on freezing food safely, this is built for you. It also works as search-friendly content for meal prep, batch cooking, food waste reduction, and home freezer organization.
The list covers what not to freeze, including salad vegetables, raw potatoes, shell eggs, hard-boiled eggs, fried foods, soft dairy, cream sauces, noodles in soup, mayo-based salads, tender herbs, and anything sealed in a full can, jar, or soda bottle. It also explains the one safety rule that matters most: never refreeze food that has warmed up. Along the way, it gives practical fixes like freezing in smaller portions, leaving headspace, using the right containers, and freezing herbs in oil for easy cooking later.
If you want a practical food storage guide, freezer tips, kitchen preservation advice, or a narrated homestead lesson on freezing food safely, this is built for you. It also works as search-friendly content for meal prep, batch cooking, food waste reduction, and home freezer organization.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is food in your freezer right now that you put there to save money, and you are going
00:06to throw it away instead. You bought the big bag on sale. You froze half of it, pleased with
00:12yourself. And three months later, you thawed it out, and it was mush, or it was watery, or it was
00:19simply wrong in a way you could not name, and into the bin it went. That was not the freezer's
00:27fault.
00:27A freezer is a fine tool, and I would not be without ours. It is that nobody ever hands you
00:35the other list, the list of what it ruins. And there is one reason underneath the whole of it,
00:42and once you have that reason, you will be able to work out any food that is not on my
00:48list for
00:49yourself. I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. We have one chest for
00:57freezer out in the shop on its own panel and battery, and it is there because when we butcher,
01:03there is more meat at once than any seller will hold. I have put a great many things in that
01:10box
01:10over the years, and I have learned what comes back out of it and what does not. I gathered the
01:17whole
01:17of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version. If you want it, it is
01:25there.
01:26I will not mention it again.
01:29My grandfather gave me the reason on the pond when I was small, and he was not talking about food
01:36at all.
01:37We cut ice off that pond every January for the ice house, and there were two kinds of winter for
01:44it.
01:44A hard one, where it came on cold and stayed cold, and the ice froze fast. That ice came up
01:53out of the
01:53pond clear as a windowpane and hard as a stone, and you could stand a block of it on end,
02:00and it would
02:01take its own weight all summer. And a soft winter, where it turned mild and froze again and turned mild
02:09again, and the ice made slowly over a week or two. That ice came up white, shot all through with
02:18lines and
02:19bubbles, and when you took hold of a block, it would break along those lines in your hands before you
02:26got it to the
02:26sledge. I asked him why one pond made two kinds of ice. He said it was the same water and
02:34the same pond. The only
02:36difference was how fast it took. What freezes slowly, freezes badly. I have thought about that
02:45pond a great many times since, because he had given me a rule about a good deal more than ice,
02:52and he
02:52never said so. Now, here is why that matters in your kitchen, and it is the one idea I would
03:00have you
03:01keep. A home freezer freezes slowly. It simply does. It has not got the power to do otherwise.
03:10And when water freezes slowly, it does not turn into one solid block. It forms crystals, and given time,
03:20those crystals grow large and jagged. Little knives in amongst everything else. In a bowl of water,
03:29that does not matter. But food is not a bowl of water. Food is water held inside millions of small
03:37cells, and when those ice knives grow inside a cell, they burst it. So when you thaw that food,
03:46all the water that was held inside its structure runs straight out, and what is left behind slumps.
03:54That is why the cucumber collapses. That is why the sour cream breaks. That is why a strawberry that
04:02went in firm comes out as a wet red rag. And now you have the rule. The more water a
04:12food holds,
04:13and the softer and more delicate it is, the worse the freezer treats it. Dense, dry, and cooked things
04:22freeze well. Wet, soft, and raw things do not. And one more thing the pond taught me that is worth
04:31saying before the list. My grandfather did not stop cutting ice in a soft winter. He cut it anyway,
04:40and he used the white ice first because it would not keep, and he saved the clear ice for August.
04:48That is how I would have you hold this whole list. It is not about what you must never put
04:55in a
04:56freezer. It is about knowing which things come out as good as they went in, and which come out
05:03changed, and using each accordingly. Now the twelve.
05:11Twelve. Salad vegetables. Lettuce, cucumber, celery, radishes. A cucumber is water wearing a green coat.
05:21There is nothing else in it. Freeze it and thaw it, and you have a limp, slimy thing, and there
05:29is no
05:30trick that brings it back. No pressing, no salting, nothing. If your garden buries you in cucumbers in
05:37August, pickle them, or grate them and freeze that for a cold soup where nobody is looking at the
05:42texture. Nothing that is going back on a plate raw. Melon belongs here too, and people do not expect it.
05:51A watermelon is the same story. Frozen in chunks for a drink, it is fine. Frozen and thawed to eat
05:58as
05:58melon, it is a puddle. Eleven. Raw potatoes. Somebody buys the big bag in the autumn, worries about
06:07it sprouting, and puts the lot in the freezer. In January, it comes out gray, grainy, and sweet,
06:14in a way a potato has no business being. The cold turns the starch to sugar, and the ice ruins
06:20the
06:21texture on top of it. But cooked potato freezes beautifully, mashed, twice baked, in a pie.
06:28And if you want chips or hash browns, boil the potato most of the way first, cool it, then freeze
06:35it.
06:35The cooking settles the starch, so the cold cannot get at it. Raw never. Cooked all day long.
06:4410. Eggs in the shell. Eggs freeze perfectly well, but the shell will not. The inside swells, the shell
06:53cracks, and now you have raw egg weeping out through a split shell in among your food, which is a
06:59mess and a
07:00matter of cleanliness in one package. Crack them instead. Whisk each one lightly into an ice tray
07:08or a muffin tin, then bag them once solid. 9. Hard-boiled eggs and anything that is mostly
07:16cooked egg white. This one catches people out because they have just been told eggs freeze.
07:22The yolk is fine. The white is not. Cooked egg white comes out of a freezer rubbery and tough and
07:30weeping
07:30water, and there is no fixing it. So a boiled egg does not go in. Nor does a quiche, or
07:37an egg salad,
07:38or a set custard. 8. Fried food. And this one hurts more than most because it is usually good food
07:47going in.
07:48The whole of fried food is the crust, and the crust is the first thing the freezer takes.
07:55Frozen and thawed, that coating turns into a damp sock round the meat because the steam coming off
08:01it as it thaws, soaks straight back into the crumb. Leftover fried chicken keeps three or four days in
08:09the cold and comes back decently in a hot oven, never a microwave, which finishes the job the freezer
08:15started. Fried food is a today and tomorrow food, and it was never meant to wait for you.
08:237. Soft dairy. Cream cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese, yogurt. And while we are here,
08:32hard cheese in a block is a near neighbor. It will freeze and it will not spoil, but it comes
08:38out
08:38crumbly and it will never slice properly again. If you are freezing cheese, grate it first and freeze
08:46the gratings and it comes out ready for a pan. These are milk fat and water holding hands, and freezing
08:53makes them let go. Thaw a tub of sour cream and you will find it grainy and curdled sitting in
09:00a puddle,
09:01and no amount of stirring puts it back together. One fair exception, because I will not pretend the rule
09:08has no cracks in it. If that broken cream cheese is going into something baked, a casserole or a batch
09:15of muffins, where it is melted and mixed anyway, it is perfectly good. So if cream cheese is cheap at
09:22Christmas, buy some and freeze it and write baking only on it. Just never plan to spread it on anything.
09:316. Cream Sauces and Gravy Anything thickened with flour or cornstarch and built on milk or cream does
09:40the same thing. It thaws into a watery layer with greasy lumps in it, and whisking only makes angry,
09:48lumpy water. And here is the fix, which is the one that makes cooking ahead actually work. Freeze the dish
09:55before the creamy part goes in. Stop just short of the cream, freeze it there, and on the night you
10:03want it, thaw it, heat it, and stir the cream in fresh. Thirty seconds and it tastes like you made
10:10the
10:10whole of it that day. Gravy is the same. Freeze the drippings and the broth. The base freezes like a
10:18champion. It is the finish that cannot take the cold. 5. Cooked Pasta and Rice Sitting in Liquid
10:27Somebody makes a fine pot of chicken noodle soup, freezes half, and thaws it a month later to find the
10:34noodles have drunk the broth and gone to paste. The soup did not fail. The noodles did. Pasta and rice
10:43go on
10:43drinking whatever they are sitting in, and they swell and split and turn to mush. So freeze the soup
10:50without the noodles and throw a handful of dry ones into the pot when you reheat it. Eight minutes.
10:57Your soup tastes fresh made every time, and that one change is the whole difference between people who
11:05say frozen soup is horrid, and people who eat well all winter for very little.
11:134. Mayonnaise and anything made with it, and this is the one people are most surprised to be told.
11:20Potato salad, egg salad, coleslaw with a dressing. Mayonnaise is oil and egg whipped into a truce,
11:29and freezing breaks the truce. It thaws as a slick of oil sitting on top of something curdled,
11:37and it takes the whole dish down with it. There is no rescue, and I have watched people try.
11:44If you are getting ahead for a gathering, make the parts ahead. Boil the potatoes, cook the chicken,
11:51those freeze fine. Mix the dressing in on the day. 3. Soft fresh herbs. Basil, parsley, cilantro,
12:03and the soft green ones generally. The hard woody ones are a different matter. Rosemary, thyme, sage,
12:12and bay have far less water in them and a tougher leaf, and they come through the cold a good
12:18deal better,
12:19and they dry well besides, which the soft ones do not. Put a bag of fresh basil in the freezer
12:26as it is,
12:27and you will pull out black slime. Those leaves are as delicate as lettuce, and the ice goes straight
12:35through them. But this is my favorite on the list, because the answer is better than the original. Chop them,
12:42pack them into an ice tray, cover them with oil, freeze them, and bag the cubes. The oil coats the
12:50leaf,
12:51so the ice cannot get at it, and every cube is the start of a dinner. One word of care
12:58on that,
12:59and it is worth knowing properly. Garlic in oil is a thing to treat with respect. Frozen it is fine,
13:07and used straight from frozen into a hot pan, it is fine. What it must never do is sit out
13:15at room
13:15temperature in the oil, thawing on a counter all afternoon, because garlic in oil left warm can grow
13:24something that will make a person very ill. Straight from the freezer to the pan, and no leaving it about.
13:342. Anything in a sealed can, a jar filled to the top, or a fizzy bottle. Water swells when it
13:43freezes,
13:44near enough a tenth again of its own size, and it does not care what is round it. A tin
13:51will split its
13:52seam. A full glass jar will crack, and sometimes not until you are lifting it out with your hands.
14:00A bottle of anything with bubbles in it will burst. That is the only other item on this list that
14:07can
14:07hurt somebody rather than merely disappoint them. So leave a good two inches of air in the top of
14:14every jar and every tub, and use straight-sided jars rather than shouldered ones, because a shoulder
14:22is where glass breaks. And one. Anything that has already been thawed warm. This is the one that is
14:32not about texture at all. This is about your family, so I will say it carefully. If you thawed meat
14:41in the
14:41refrigerator and your plans changed, you can freeze it again. That is true, and I want you to know it
14:49is
14:49true, because people throw out good food over this every week of the year. It stayed cold the whole
14:57time. It will be a little drier, and that is the whole cost of it. But if that package sat
15:04on the
15:04counter all afternoon, or went round in a microwave and then sat while you got busy, it does not go
15:12back
15:13in. Not ever. Here is the plain reason. Freezing does not kill what causes food poisoning. It puts it to
15:23sleep. Warm the food, and it wakes up and multiplies, and freezing it again does not undo a minute of
15:32that.
15:33You have pressed pause on a problem, and it is all still there, waiting the second time.
15:40The freezer is not a reset. It never was. If meat got warm, cook it now, or let it go.
15:49And a word on thawing, since it is the other half of the same idea, and people undo good work
15:55here.
15:56Thaw slowly and cold. In the refrigerator, overnight, or in a sealed bag in a bowl of cold water if
16:04you are
16:04in a hurry. Never on the counter, and I have given you the reason already. The outside of that package
16:11warms up hours before the middle has thawed, and warm meat standing out is where trouble starts.
16:18And a great many things are better cooked from frozen, rather than thawed at all. Vegetables,
16:25certainly. Soup. A stew. Anything that is going into a pot with heat under it. The less time food
16:32spends sitting about in the middle between frozen and cooked, the better it will be. Now, two things
16:39worth knowing that will improve everything else you freeze. Freeze it fast as you can, because that is
16:46the whole of the lesson from the pond. Small portions, laid flat, spread out against the walls
16:52of the box where the cold is, rather than a great warm heap in the middle. The middle of a
16:58chest freezer
16:59is the slowest place in it. And get the air out. Air dries the surface of frozen food, and that
17:06is the
17:07white leathery patch people call freezer burn. It is not spoilage, and it is safe, and you can cut it
17:14off,
17:14but it is a waste, and pressing the air out of a bag costs nothing. And use the right wrapping.
17:21A thin sandwich bag is not a freezer bag, and it will let air through in a month. Proper freezer
17:28bags,
17:29rigid tubs with a good lid, or wrap pressed right against the surface of the food before the bag goes
17:36round it. The enemy is the air between the food and the wrapper, so take that air out, and you
17:42have
17:43solved most of it. One last thing that belongs with the whole list. Nothing on it is improved by being
17:50in there longer. A freezer holds a thing where it is. It does not repair anything, and it does not
17:58make
17:58anything better. And a food that was tired going in comes out tired. So freeze things at their best,
18:05rather than at the end of their life, which is exactly backwards from how most people use the box.
18:12Now the plain limits. None of this is about safety except the last two. Everything else on the list is
18:19about texture and taste, and a thing that comes out badly is not a thing that will harm you. And
18:27a home
18:27freezer will never do what a factory does. Walk the frozen aisle, and you will see cream sauces and
18:34fried food and pasta dishes, every one of them a thing I have just told you not to freeze, and
18:41theirs
18:41mostly works. That is because they freeze it in minutes at temperatures your box will never reach,
18:48so the crystals stay too small to cut anything, and they put things in it to hold the sauces together.
18:55You cannot do that at home, and there is no use pretending. There is no scheme in any of this,
19:02and nobody arranged anything. The money simply runs the other way. Every time a home frozen meal comes
19:09out ruined, a person learns a quiet lesson that freezing their own food does not really work,
19:16and the next time they buy the frozen version at four times the price. Nobody in that chain loses a
19:23penny when you throw food away. It is only that nobody makes a living telling you which foods take
19:29the cold and which do not, so nobody says it, and a thing nobody has a reason to say gets
19:35forgotten
19:36inside of one generation. So here is what I would have you do tonight, and it costs nothing at all.
19:43Open your freezer and find one thing off this list. The bag of cucumber, the tub of gravy,
19:50the tub of soup with the noodles in it. Deal with it now while you are thinking of it,
19:56rather than finding it in April. And the next time you cook ahead, stop before the cream and leave
20:03out the noodles. And while the door is open, look for anything that has no name on it. An unlabeled
20:10bag
20:11in January is a mystery, and mysteries get thrown out. So put a pencil to whatever you find, and you
20:18will eat it instead. So tell me in the comments what is the worst thing you have ever pulled out
20:24of a freezer. I would like the stories, and I have one or two of my own. And if you
20:29have told me your
20:30county before, tell me this instead. How many people do you cook for? Because that decides what size a
20:38portion ought to be, and portioning is half of freezing well. Next time, I want to show you what
20:45the freezer is genuinely for, which is turning the cheapest and toughest piece of meat in that counter
20:51into three meals instead of one. It is the least fashionable part of the animal, and it is where
20:58nearly all the value is hiding. What freezes slowly, freezes badly. The people who built this country with
21:07their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.