Raid Your Freezer

Desperate times call for using all the strange food you have stored.

The First Look

Upon initial judgement when you open your freezer, you may only see what you are looking for: specific ingredients for recipes or something pre-made. Although you will not always find these things at the ready. Therefore it is time to learn how to make use of everything in your freezer.

Firstly

Look for produce such as fruit or vegetables that can accompany other foods. For example, say you have a full bag of frozen cherries in your fridge but they are in no shape to be defrosted and eaten by the handful. I have found that frozen fruit after it has been defrosted is not as appetizing for snacking; rather, try using foods, like fruit, that can't be eaten plain in other recipes. For the defrosted cherry scenario, I dehydrated them in the oven. This made the cherries like large raisins and could be used as so. They could be mixed in homemade granola, trail mix, or breads.

How to Find Food Solutions

Sometimes when there is something in my pantry, or freezer, that I want to use but have no idea how, I can use almost any cooking website. I have found that most websites allow you to search recipes by ingredient and this has shown to be helpful when I have an ingredient to use; yet, I am unsure of in what way to use it. This usually applies to things that might spoil or wilt like dairy and fresh produce.

Site recommendations:

For mainly vegan/ vegetarian: https://minimalistbaker.com/

For Everything (NYT subscription needed):

https://cooking.nytimes.com/

For more: https://www.bonappetit.com/

Be Creative

When you want to make a recipe but don't have all the ingredients and are avoiding going to the store often, then make substitutions. Cooking is supposed to be an enjoyable, experimental task, so don't be afraid to test things out. You might fail a couple times, as everyone does, but you may also find something extremely delicious!

Happy experimenting!

Photo from Unsplash