OK, OK, we know that Costco is a huge for discounted food. Costco gets you the discount by volume so how do I (or We) shop there, save money and not waste family size food? We will show you how to show you how to freeze like a beast. All you need to know about freezing food for a later day.
You can imagine that as I make recipes I need to have food portions measured. Now I appreciate that no everyone has a scale, so how do you portion food without a scale? Use the good old calculator and food label to figure out. Use the weight on the label, and then divide by ‘X’ equal portions. Here’s how I did our salmon. Look at at the bottom left it says 1.39 kilos.
The label says:
I’m a Canadian but I still cook in pounds. So this is around 3 pounds. This means if I want to make 1/5 pound servingings I need to cut this into 6 equal servings. (Now, I happen to know that the last serving of salmon I usually make are small so I will actually be doing this in 7 servings but the last 2 pieces count as 1.)
I try to make quick work of it. I use some extra ‘plastic wrap’ to make sure my food stays on a clean surface.
To save the environment and make it really easy to pull out single serving I usually wrap this in plastic wrap and then throw it into a bag. The portions were quite long so i found wrapping it on the diagonal worked better.
OK now we have Salmon purchased cheap from Costco, Frozen individually for whenever you want to have salmon.
I do the same for chicken but with Chicken I don’t use plastic wrap I just throw two in a back and flat pack it. Making the chicken as flat as possible without damaging anything is the key to fitting more into your freezer.
Here’s how to flat pack ground meat.
Either use the weight divided by portion count or actually weigh the meet.
Once you have portioned the meat in the bag, you want to make the meet as flat as possible. This helps for for two reasons.
- Storage:
- standard flat squares store easier than a ‘ball-o-meat’.
- Thawing
- It much quicker to thaw flat packed meet.
- It also thaws more evenly than a ‘ball-o-meat’.
To flat pack, this means getting most of the air out and meat in every corner of the bag. The secret is not to use force but brains. I start by trying to make a letter “I” where it flares out at the top and the bottom.. You want meet in the corners of the bag, but you can air stops this. The easiest way I have found to get meat into the bottom corners is to keep the top open keep the bag up right and bang it on the counter this usually helps meet fall into the corernes. Once you have meet in the bottom corners I close the bag 3/4 of the way and start massaging it flat.
You’ll get the hang of it. The more you do it the easier it is. I suggest going as thin as possible as it also helps with thawing the beef later when you need it.
Now if you are doing ribs, I suggest
- Remember to take the membrane off. This is way easier to do now and makes the “ready to cook”. Check out my rib recipe for instructions on how to remove it.
- Cutting them in half, it’s just easier to work with them. Both with Tinfoil later when you are cooking and now fitting inside a plastic bag.
- Cut them in half, 1/2 a rack is a pretty good serving for 1 person making this ready for a 1 person meal.
- Costco was nice enough to make a 6 pound package with 3 ribs racks. This makes the math easy, this is 6 servings of 1/2 rack each.
- I also wrap them in plastic wrap cause this makes them so they don’t stick together and I can pull out just 1 serving.
This all depends on how much room you have to what you can do. But I definitely suggest using plastic wrap to help you select portions for when you need them. It’s also super helpful to have an idea how much your are cooking so please label your bags. (I suggest actually labeling once you do the math on the labels so your hands are still clean and you don’t have to do them after portioning as often this will mean extra hand washing.)