Nick99
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Joined: 8/28/2004
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I see a lot of people talking about freezers.
The tip about the straw in a ziplock is a very good way to keep the enemy of frozen food away from your valuables. Air/oxygen. This is what causes freezer burn and turns your bargain into garbage.
If you think you have found the perfect sized freezer, get the next size up, and if you can swing it, the size above that. You will be surprised how quickly you can fill up a freezer with sale stuff. The larger unit allows you to pack in a little bit more. You will use it if you rotate your stock in the freezer and none of it will go to waste. And you will have room for the unexpected bargains that you may come across.
In your new super sized freezer, fill as many gallon jugs as you have with water. Put them in the bottom as you start filling the freezer. This will do a couple of things for you. A full freezer uses less electricity than half empty one. If for any reason you lose power, the ice will help in keeping the freezer cold and buy you a day or two before you have to eat a lot of food or throw it out. In the possiblity that there is a natural disaster, you will have fresh water to drink if you can't get water from your well or water company.
Seafood goes bad the quickest and must be kept the coldest. Lots of fish and seafood will not last long if you lose power. Had to eat a lot of fried shirmp, crab and lobster in the navy because the freezers were on the fritz for a week or so. Yes, you can get tired of those things if you have to eat a lot of them unexpected. So be careful with your seafood purchases if you are in an area prone to electricity outages and you don't have a generator to keep the freezer running.
Chest freezers are better then uprights. Cold air is heavier than warm/hot air. Every time you open a upright freezer, all the cold air falls out and the freezer needs to run again to cool off all the new warm air.
Save your pennies for the freezer, but don't forget a vacuum sealer. If you are eating all that you freeze, it will pay for itself in the first year. Just like with the freezer, the better the vacuum sealer, the better the product most of the time.
Only reuse the bags on the stuff you can afford to toss out if goes bad or gets freezer burn. Always use a new bag for the more expensive stuff.
Fish has little bones, they are like pins. Take the time to pull the bones on things like filets or fold them in half before sealing them in the bag. Don't forget about the other bones meats might have, either debone them before sealing them up, or somehow pad the bones to keep them from poking holes in the bags.
Some things have a lot of moisture in them. Par-freeze before vacuum sealing to limit the amount of juices pulled out. (this also keeps you from having a stinky sealer if you don't clean it out often enough).
If you are making the bags from a roll, make sure the heat seals you make are good ones. You can also double heatseal the ends of bag if you want to make sure they are sealed well. If you are making your own bags, make them longer then you think you need, this will allow reuse.
Package the stuff you are vacuum sealing in the size servings you will use the most. Better to have to thaw out an extra packag or two of pork chops when you have guest, then having to eat so any of one thing that you tire of it and don't want to eat it any more. Kind of ruins the great bargain if you moan every time you move it around the freezer.
No matter where you put your freezer, remember, it is made to freeze things. Putting it outside on the porch is not a good idea because it throws off the heat balance a freezer needs to operate.
Here is one of the most important tips for your freezer: NEVER PLUG YOUR FREEZER INTO A CIRCUIT THAT IS PROTECTED WITH A GFCI PLUG/CIRCUIT. A friend of mine lost a lot of meat, game and fish, probably around the tune of $1000, because his freezer was plugged into a circuit protected by a GFCI. When the power came back on, the surge of the freezer and everything else on the circuit caused the GFCI to pop. Since he was not home at the time, and when he did return home he did not notice some of his electronic were not on because he didn't need them. By the time they went to the freezer to get some fish, you guessed it, stink city and all of it had to go. Needless to say, he put a circuit in for just the freezer after they got the stinky meat thrown away and the new freezer purchased because the stink could just not be cleaned out of it.
I hope this helps some of you, but my 18 cu ft freezer has feed two for over decade. I have only had to throw out less then 100 pounds of meat over that time because of freezer burn. And most of that is because it was forgetten that it was in the freezer. So my last tip, keep an inventory to prevent forgeting what you got in there and having it go bad.
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