A word about frozen foods and freezing things at home.

It was mentioned in this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=236x84354 that frozen fish is mostly water and mushy. Same goes for meats in general.

The reason is that ice crystals form in the cells and puncture the cell walls. When it's thawed all the juices drain out. The longer it takes to freeze the larger the ice crystals are and the more cellular damage done. Flash freezing, usually done with liquid nitrogen, instantly hard freezes food to below 0f, making the ice crystals small enough to do minimal damage. That's how the individually frozen single serving meats are done.

That's not really practical at home but we can minimize cellular damage by speeding the process as much as we can. For small items, ie fresh shrimp, cool them in the coldest part of the fridge for an hour or so. Transfer them to a baking tray in a single layer not touching and freeze in your freezer. Once frozen transfer to freezer bags (or food saver) and store as usual.

For things you can shape, like ground meat, package it in freezer bags and maximize the surface area by packaging it thin and flat. Proceed as above by cooling it first then freezing in a single layer.

I've done this and it makes a big difference. I suppose this would work for asparagus or green beans too. Next time I do a big batch of sausage I'll try shrink wrapping it (food saver) and try a salt ice bath to prep it for freezing.

and it does make sense, I knew about the breaking the cell wall stuff, but never took it to the logical conclusion to minimize damage in my home freezer.

My itty bitty freezer, which is actually just the cold plate for the entire refrigerator and is open to it, takes forever to freeze something.

I will try cooling things first and making them thin. I also try to get meat/poultry that is already frozen.

Although my freezer does hard freeze most things and can even make ice, I can not put anything like ice cream in there, which is sad.

Thanks, for the advice!

:hi:

We had one of those when I was growing up. I always assumed they had gone the way of the dodo. I suppose it was a cost saving measure, not having a separate cooling mechanism for the freezer.

was to cool the fish to about 30 degrees before freezing it. This allows the fluids to expand without freezing and stretches the cell walls without breaking them. It also makes the actual freezing faster. After chilling, freeze 'em up in any convenient package. The market used to have huge chill rooms for this.

When I lived Downtown I used to buy at the Fulton Market a couple of times a month. You had to buy 25 pounds of cod fillets or 20 pounds of yellowtail to get in, so I had lots of friends to share this stuff with. On Fish Day I would drop the temp on my standard NYC apartment cheapshit fridge as low as it would go and leave the fish in there all day before freezing my share. My frozen fish always cooked up nicely.