This leaves two more soup recipes I would still like to shoehorn in, and then lots of revisions.
This vacation is turning out to be quite productive!
Refrigerating and Freezing Your
Cooked Foods
Cooked foods need to be eaten,
refrigerated, or frozen within two hours of being cooked. The sooner
the food is refrigerated or frozen, the longer it will last, and the
quality will remain higher for longer.
The USDA recommends that refrigerated
leftovers be eaten or thrown away within two days. However, foods
that are cooked for later use, if handled carefully and refrigerated
promptly, can be good for up to five days when refrigerated . This
makes it possible to cook meal elements on a weekend (such as Boiled
Beans #, Boiled Grains #, or Pot Roast #) that can
be assembled into quick week-night meals.
When you need to
put a hot food into the refrigerator or freezer, avoid leaving it out
to cool at room temperature, because this extends the time that the
food will spend in the danger zone. You can cool some foods quickly
(such as boiled grains, boiled beans, or steamed vegetables) by
putting the food in a colander and running cold tap water over it.
You can cool a large pot of food by setting it in a sink filled with
ice and water. Large chunks of meat or whole poultry can be cooled
by cutting up the meat and placing it on a cold plate before moving
it into a container for storage.
While you can cool
food by moving it directly to the refrigerator or freezer, if you do
this with too large a quantity of food, you run the risk of putting
everything in the refrigerator or freezer in the danger zone. If you
need to do this, make sure the hot food has as much space around it
as possible, so that the cold air can circulate.
Hot glass cookware
should not be cooled quickly, because it could shatter.
When handling
foods prior to storage, practice safe food-handling: wash your hands,
and also handle the food as little as possible with your hands.
Refrigerates foods
can be moved into the freezer at any time. However, a food that is
on the verge of spoiling before freezing will be just as bad when it
comes back out of the freezer. The sooner you freeze your food, the
better.
“Disposable”
plastic boxes are ideal for refrigerating and freezing foods, because
they are inexpensive and can be washed and reused until they break.
These boxes come in a range of sizes, and can be heated in the
microwave. To remove a frozen block of food from one of these boxes,
run some hot tap water over the box. Do note, however, that these
boxes become brittle when frozen, which can make them shatter when
dropped.
When freezing
soups, boiled grains, beans in their cooking water, or other wet
food, it helps to save the food in individual serving sizes. Baby
food and broth can be frozen in ice-cube trays and then moved to a
sealed container. Chopped greens can be saved in any sized
container, because the desired amount can be easily broken off with a
fork. To keep them from sticking together, slices of meatloaf,
pancakes, French toast, and similar items can either be frozen on a
cookie sheet, and then moved to a container; or they can be frozen
separated by pieces of parchment paper. Cooked beans and meatballs
can also be frozen first on a cookie sheet in order to keep them from
sticking together into one large mass.
Fresh produce can be be “blanched”
(dipped in boiling water) and then frozen for long-term storage.
More information on blanching can be found online at
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09330.html
The safest way to
thaw frozen food is in the refrigerator. Small items will require a
day or two to thaw in the refrigerator. Larger items, such as
turkey, will take about one day to thaw for each 4 or 5 pounds.
Smaller quantities
of frozen food can be thawed safely in a bowl of cold water, or in
the microwave on the “defrost” setting. Never leave food to thaw
at room temperature.
More information
on freezing can be found at
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/Focus_On_Freezing/index.asp
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