Freezer Technique That Will Save You Time and Space

I am not a canner (although I admire all of you who are!), but I love to fill my freezer when I have an abundance of something. I freeze things regularly, but the end of the summer especially brings opportunities to freeze things like tomatoes and zucchini. I recently saw that apples freeze easily. That will come in handy when the apples start coming in abundance. If you are ever unsure what can be frozen or how to freeze it, just do a google search. Most things can be frozen, but may need a little prep.

cheesy mashed potato cauliflower bake

Earlier this summer I bought a large box of red potatoes for an amazing price. Before the box was half empty some of the potatoes started to go bad. I knew I needed to preserve them or I would be wasting half of the box, making them not a good deal after all.

garlic and spinach mashed potatoes

I had tried to freeze potatoes in the past and they turned brown. I googled "how to freeze potatoes" and was able to successfully freeze all of our potatoes. As a side note, it was a lot of work and potatoes are fairly cheap, so next time I may pass on the box of potatoes. However, I am loving the convenience of having precut, parboiled potatoes in the freezer. They cook up super fast and tender and work great boiled or roasted.

Short-Cut Method of Freezing
My normal method of freezing something like this is to spread it on a baking sheet lined with a silicone mat, cover, freeze, and transfer to ziplock bags. This method is a great way to ensure the food doesn't clump into one solid mass. The problem with this method was that I had way more potatoes than trays.

My solution was to fill the ziplock bags in a flat single layer and put the filled bag onto my baking sheet. This way I could stack several bags on top of one baking sheet. (Note that the potatoes are completely cooled before putting them into the bags which makes a huge difference in this process.)

I frozen 10 gallon sized bags of potatoes and was able to stack them onto two baking sheets before putting them into my chest freezer. Not only was I able to freeze all of them on only two baking sheets, but it saved me the step of transferring the potatoes from the baking sheet to the ziplock bags.

Once frozen it was easy to organize the potatoes in the freezer because they could stand up straight or lay flat. When I go to use the potatoes, a simple drop on the counter separates all of the pieces.

I have since done this on a small scale when freezing other items. It is so convenient to skip the transfer from baking sheet to plastic bags.