Challenge: Cook your way through your freezer (part 1)

[ElsieD]

1 hour ago, rotuts said:

 

I will say this :  Bulk SV + Freezers = a disease.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope it's not catching.

[rotuts]

Id use the term Insidious :

 

"  intended to entrap or beguile "

 

" stealthily treacherous or deceitful "

 

" operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmlessway but actually with grave effect "

 

etc

[gfweb]

With my kitchen gone I've been pretty much doing this challenge. 

Two dishes to enter..seared frozen scallops over frozen corn and frozen diced and fried Spanish chorizo in a cream sauce.....CSO steamed fz salmon with a tomato onion white wine reduction. Tasted better than it sounds

Edited January 19, 2017 by gfweb (log)

[Martin Fisher]

16 hours ago, scubadoo97 said:

This is what I do most every day.

 

Me too.

[Okanagancook]

I too am working on the freezer.  They are pretty organized but I need to use the 'first in, first out' method of using stuff. 

However, I just reached into the 'lamb meat' section and pulled out a package of chops.  I have lentils in the fridge so it will be lamb and lentils on Saturday.

For lunch freezer beet soup and bell pepper salad.

[Anna N]

 Before I left for my appointment this morning I reached into my freezer and grabbed the package that was on the very top of the bottom drawer. It was 8 ounces of ground beef. I had lots of time to think about what my second ingredient would be. 

 

Barley has only just made a reappearance in my house. I grew up on barley: barley water*, barley sugar**, beef barley soup, scotch broth, etc.  But my husband despised barley  and so for almost 50 years you could not find a barley kernel anywhere  in any house we occupied. But now I'm welcoming it back.

 

I am still not 100% sure of what I am going to make with my two Bs.  Perhaps a barley bowl with some beef and vegetables, perhaps a soup, perhaps a casserole. Stay tuned. 

 

 *Barley water, homemade or purchased, was a cure-all in our family. 

 

**Barley sugar was a sweet (candy) that most children of my generation loved. Probably gone out of style now. 

 

 

[Anna N]

1 hour ago, Beebs said:

Fun idea, Anna N!  I'm game, but probably won't get to it for another few days.

 

(DH just filled the freezer back up with dumplings - hope I don't get dumplings and uhhh...doughnuts. Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

 Remember that the second ingredient is your choice and not something random from your freezer.  

[chromedome]

1 hour ago, Anna N said:

**Barley sugar was a sweet (candy) that most children of my generation loved. Probably gone out of style now. 

 

 

Here in my neck of the woods, figures ("toys") of barley sugar have been a Christmas tradition for the best part of a century. One or two companies still make them...I have a couple of bags destined for my step-grandkids in California (I'm a bit late getting them in the mail). 

[Anna N]

 

 I reached way back into my childhood for my first challenge dish which used beef and barley.   Mince was one of my favourite meals. It was never called anything else but mince and when I emailed my sister in England today for her recipe she knew immediately what I meant because she still serves it once or twice a month.  As @liuzhou has noted elsewhere, it is cottage pie without the potato crust. I served it over barley which I cooked in the Instant Pot. 

 

[Smithy]

You posted this topic just after we'd refilled the trailer freezer on a shopping expedition. If I join you on this challenge, I might - just might - have the darned freezer empty by May.  Whether I'll join you remains to be seen, but I'll be following along with interest!

 

Re barley: I'd forgotten all about how much I used to love beef barley soup.  Thanks for the reminder!

[quiet1]

21 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 

 I reached way back into my childhood for my first challenge dish which used beef and barley.   Mince was one of my favourite meals. It was never called anything else but mince and when I emailed my sister in England today for her recipe she knew immediately what I meant because she still serves it once or twice a month.  As @liuzhou has noted elsewhere, it is cottage pie without the potato crust. I served it over barley which I cooked in the Instant Pot. 

 

 

Im quite curious for the recipe if you don't mind sharing.

[Anna N]

Basically it is this .  I had to cut it down considerably because I only had 8 ounces of ground beef and I had no celery so I skipped that.  I used Better Than Bouillon beef base.  

[weedy]

MY freezer contains:

 

frozen (vacuum bagged): LaFrieda burgers, Short ribs, Iberia Secreto, duck breasts, a variety of sausages (chorizo, andouille, Italian hot, Iberia chorizo, Boudin), a few types of bacon, and crawfish tail meat and 'fat'.

 

on the other side: Anson Mills benne seeds nd grits, frozen corn, peas

 

on top shelf: a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, bottle of Luksosowa vodka, ice cubes, green tea mochi

 

a few frozen sauces I've made and had extra: etoufée, Pipian rojo, shrimp stock.

 

so... I can't really start cooking my way through this per se... the whole point here is deep stock.

 

I don't want to eat meat more often than the once every few weeks we do now, and I don't need to drink more!

 

so I guess I can't play

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I pulled out some Pepperoni from the freezer and made a pizza with sliced fresh jalapeno Pepper. The inspiration came from trying to walk to a Subway sandwich shop, but the only safe and legal crossing of a busy street would have put me on the side of the street with no sidewalk. I wouldn't mind walking on a shoulder or grass, but there was no shoulder to speak of, and there are banks that rise steeply in front of the businesses on that side. If I'd been really determined, I could have walked all the way down to the next safe and legal crossing, walked back to the subway (still no sidewalk), walked again out of my way to the intersection, but that would have added over a mile to the journey, and I'm not nearly as quick as I used to be at getting out of the way of traffic. So I trudged back home thinking of ordering a pizza for delivery. I got disgusted with that and just decided to make one instead.

 

I made the crust from this recipe, halved. Besides pepperoni and jalapeno, my pizza also had mushrooms and very thin sliced white onion. I also took an 8 oz. container of Pizza sauce out of the freezer to use here. I had a small piece of muenster and a larger piece of brie that needed using up, so that went on too. I was skeptical about grating the brie, but it actually worked better than the disaster I imagined, and grating the harder muenster last cleaned the softer brie off pretty well.

 

The only problem is, that with only me eating, I put six slices of pizza into the freezer and only took out a small package of pepperoni and the pizza sauce to make the pizza. I'm starting to understand some of @rotuts thoughts on the matter and understand why my freezers got in this overloaded shape to begin with.

 

I pulled out a chicken breast to thaw for tomorrow.

[Anna N]

8 hours ago, weedy said:

MY freezer contains:

 

frozen (vacuum bagged): LaFrieda burgers, Short ribs, Iberia Secreto, duck breasts, a variety of sausages (chorizo, andouille, Italian hot, Iberia chorizo, Boudin), a few types of bacon, and crawfish tail meat and 'fat'.

 

on the other side: Anson Mills benne seeds nd grits, frozen corn, peas

 

on top shelf: a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin, bottle of Luksosowa vodka, ice cubes, green tea mochi

 

a few frozen sauces I've made and had extra: etoufée, Pipian rojo, shrimp stock.

 

so... I can't really start cooking my way through this per se... the whole point here is deep stock.

 

I don't want to eat meat more often than the once every few weeks we do now, and I don't need to drink more!

 

so I guess I can't play

That's OK.  The challenge wasn't meant for everyone.  

[Anna N]

 I reached into my freezer a few minutes ago and retrieved 1 pound of split chicken wings. Now how serendipitous is that? I just dragged the air fryer back into the kitchen, just got a book by Todd English about the air fryer and one of the recipes is for chicken wings. (And now you know I cheated.)   Still it will add to the unburdening of my freezer drawers.  I am going to go for the honey garlic version in the book. But my next challenge is the second ingredient.  I now have the same dilemma that @ElsieD  had upthread. Will my second ingredient begin with C for chicken, W for wings or perhaps H for honey garlic?   I have a few hours to reach a decision and choose my second ingredient. I may have to be extraordinarily creative with the alphabet.  

[chromedome]

It's a bilingual country..."ailes" and "poulet" are available options as well.

 

[ElsieD]

As mentioned above, I reached into the freezer and landed on TJ's Chili-Lime Chicken Burgers.  We had them tonight topped with a Carrot Cucumber Chili (Serrano) pepper salad.  They were served on a Brioche Burger Bun.  

[Thanks for the Crepes]

This afternoon, I took my thawed chicken breast out, skinned and boned it and detached the "tenderloin" at the natural muscle separation. Then I took the the breast and laid it out flat on my meat cutting board and cut it into four fingers about the size and shape of the tenderloin. I seasoned the chicken fingers with cayenne pepper, chili powder, cumin, rosemary, black pepper, and MSG. On the MSG, I took a tip from @Kim Shook's recent post in the Dinner thread where she seasoned her fried chicken with Accent. I believe Accent is just MSG, but may be wrong. I thought that was a great way to add back some flavor to rather bland factory farmed chicken.

 

I let the seasoned chicken hang out in the fridge until dinner time.

 

I decided to batter it, but didn't want a heavy batter. I looked through the four recipes I have from books I own for tempura batter, but all of them just use flour and made far too much. I came across this recipe on line, which is similar to the most successful attempt at it way back in high school Home Ec class. That recipe is sadly lost, but I remembered it used cornstarch, and we put ice cubes in the batter to keep it cold.

 

I upped the salt in the linked recipe and decreased the seltzer water by the volume the ice displaced and by 1/4 cup. I would decrease the seltzer even further next time and up the salt more. Otherwise, this recipe is a winner with me. I cut a 3/8 inch crosswise slice from a white onion, separated it into rings, and fried that first. The batter came out super crisp, lacy, and I think, if the batter had been a bit thicker, it would be close to perfect. Then I fried the chicken fingers. The batter wasn't as successful here, probably because of the chicken juices seeping out, but it was still fine. Maybe there is a reason I've never heard of chicken tempura? I can't wait to try the recipe again when I have some mushrooms and other good tempura veggies. I have shrimp in the freezer too, but that will have to wait. I had two of the chicken fingers left, and plenty of other leftovers in the fridge to eat for tomorrow, so the freezer reduction will have to wait.

 

The rest of the dinner is on the Dinner thread because it had no C ingredients, but I did make a Custard. 

[Anna N]

 

 After thinking about honey garlic wings for most of the day, when it came time to make dinner I knew I could not stomach anything that called for third of a cup of honey and a third of a cup of brown sugar. Todd English be damned. So I dried off the wings, dusted them generously with salt and pepper, tossed them in a combination of grape seed oil and toasted sesame oil and chose the C for chicken and then C for carrots and cucumbers.  A nice dip would have been welcome but by then I was out of energy. The wings were not bad but a little overcooked.

[lindag]

On ‎1‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 8:54 AM, rotuts said:

 

 

In my case , one freezer became two.  for a good reason : to defrost the first every few years.  I used to do this during very cold weather.

My upright became two as well.  I was doing a lot of breadmaking in those days and needed extra space for all the extra ingredients I kept on hand....at least that was my excuse!  I got an even larger upright than the first and in no time they were both filled to their brims.

I badly really need to defrost the one in the garage but it's SO cold out there right now I can't bring myself to do it.  That's when I really get down and get rid of some of that stuff that lost as well as the stuff I'll never use.

 

[ninagluck]

I certainly have to join here! living alone and having two packed freezers the challenge is a must! Today I grabbed some  stuffed pasta, will serve it with brown butter, parmesan and a salad on the side. for tomorrow a pack with lambs liver is thawing in the fridge.

[Anna N]

31 minutes ago, ninagluck said:

I certainly have to join here! living alone and having two packed freezers the challenge is a must! Today I grabbed some  stuffed pasta, will serve it with brown butter, parmesan and a salad on the side. for tomorrow a pack with lambs liver is thawing in the fridge.

I am so happy you are joining us. 

[ninagluck]

proof, spinach, cheese filled pasta

[Katie Meadow]

I have one freezer, vertical, as part of the fridge. It isn't really large, but it is certainly larger than a top or bottom freezer section in most appliances. Just as a guess, I would say about half the volume is usually stock: chicken, turkey or ham. If I cook a pot of beans or soup I try to freeze a quart, but usually we just eat the leftovers the next day. Every September and October, when fresh hot chiles are available, I roast them and pack them in usable portions in the freezer; a habit I picked up when living in New Mexico. I send away for stone-ground grits and freeze it in portion bags. Typically there are at least a couple of frozen skinned and boned chicken breast that I defrost for stir-fry or chicken salad but I don't keep other meats in the freezer, since we don't eat a lot of meat anyway. When I make a pasta or pizza sauce I try to freeze a few containers of that, but they get used pretty quickly. My husband has started making more bread, so sometimes we freeze a loaf. But generally there isn't a wide variety of stuff in our freezer. No vegetables get in there, so I would be hard put to make a meal just from the freezer. Sometimes I dream about having another freezer, like in the basement to free up room for more stock. The older I get the more I want soup.