With a tagline of, ‘No packaging. Nothing processed. No waste,’ you can bet Anne-Marie Bonneau of ZeroWasteChef.com fame, knows a thing or two about the best ways to freeze food – without using plastic.
In a recent post on the website, Anne-Marie shared her top tips for freezing food efficiently without using wasteful and potentially harmful plastic.
Using glass jars and reusable glass containers, the Zero Waste Chef has successful cut out any waste in her home as well as saved food in abundance.
Zero Waste Chef’s Top Tips For Freezing Food Without Plastic
“Always leave headspace when freezing liquids.” Anne-Marie states that she prefers wide-mouth jars for freezing or one that has straight sides all the way up. The headspace allows for any liquids in the jars to expand and prevents breakages.
“Don’t overstuff your freezer with jars stacked all over the place willy-nilly.” Anne-Marie shares that if you are careful with freezer packing of your jars, you will prevent accidents, potential injuries and breakages of your beautiful food in jars.
Image source: Twitter
What To Freeze Without Plastic
Stuck for ideas on what to freeze without plastic? Here are some of Anne-Marie’s recommendations:
“Beans”: These can be frozen with or without liquid. Cooked beans on hand in the freezer are great for adding to dishes as you go.
“Sourdough crackers”: These crackers freeze very well in glass jars.
“Cookies”: Freeze leftover cookies or an ‘emergency batch’ in your freezer in a wide mouth jar for easy afternoon teas!
“Bread”: Freezing bread in homemade cloth bags is another great way of not wasting any food and also not using plastic to store in.
“Fruit”: Anne-Marie does not buy frozen fruit as it is generally packaged in plastic bags. Instead, she states that she freezes seasonal fruit, for example, berries, peach slices and grapes. Simply spread your fruit out onto a cooking tray and put the whole thing into the freezer. One the fruit has frozen, Anne-Marie then transfers the fruit into glass jars.
With Anne-Marie’s tips, freezing without plastic is quite easy. You will be helping the environment by reducing waste and removing any risk of potential contaminants that may exist plastic.
Mm frozen grapes, I’ve heard they’re good to munch on.
Freezing cut up tomatoes is great to use instead of tinned tomatoes. It has added water because it’s frozen.
I’m afraid of glass breaking, but I do freeze a lot of the suggestions above. Anything excess from the garden, bread, extra meals (I cook a double batch then freeze half for a night off). I buy in bulk and freeze the excess to save fuel into town, and its cheaper in bulk anyway. I have reusable plastic dishes and ice cream containers for most of my items, labelled and dated. I do prefer keeping garden excess like capsicum, carrot and beans in a ziplock bag though, already cut up, so that I can break off the portion I require, reseal and pop back in the freezer.
lol i had put a can of coke in the freezer to chill it and forgot all about it until i heard a huge noise and it had expanded in the freezer lol. big mess to clean up
If you bumped a glass jar and it fell out of the freezer I reckon the glass might smash, and even damage your floor where it hit. Plastic may/may not split. Not all thicknesses of glass would be safe to freeze. Glass is a lot heavier than plastic so you would have to take that into consideration. Unless square glass jars are manufactured they would also waste too much space. Round containers are not ideal for freezing. The interior structure of the freezer would need to be a lot stronger to support the extra weight.
I would love to know what type of cloth bag is suitable for freezing bread in too. Certainly not synthetic that releases chemicals
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mom93821 replied
- 20 Jan 2016 , 6:38 am
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