cam (08/02/82)
I would like information about freezing foods. I have a large freezer and would like to freeze vegetables from my garden, leftovers, etc. Some foods may lose some of their nutritional value when frozen. Some foods get a strange texture. Does anyone know of a good reference book on the subject of freezing? I can pass on a technique to stop cheese from getting crumbly when frozen. You wrap the cheese in wax paper, then plastic wrap (like Glad wrap), then aluminum foil. This technique seems strange, but it works well. I use it on Colby and Cheddar cheese. Mozzarella and Swiss cheese do not seem to get crumbly when frozen.
rew (08/03/82)
One book that provides information on home freezing of a variety of vegetables is 'When the Good Cook Gardens' -- this is one of the Ortho series on gardening (most of which are pretty good & surprisingly short of 'pour on the pesticide' tone). It also has some pretty good recipes. Bob Warren cbosg!nscs!rew
cak (08/10/82)
I have found that the trick to freezing cheese is not so much how you wrap it, but how you thaw it. We often buy whole wheels of Jarlsberg cheese to freeze. Typically, it gets cut into 6 or 7 wedges, each gets wrapped in aluminum foil, and into the freezer. To retrieve the cheese, we always thaw it in the foil, in the refrigerator. Comes out great. Chris Kent, Purdue CS
jcwinterton (08/17/82)
You can actually freeze dry some cheeses with useful results. If you freeze roquefort in a freezer bag that has been exhausted partially (breathe in hard!), it will crumble into a powder that works very well in dressings where you want the flavor but not the lumps. I've only seen this done once as it is not to my taste (I like my blue cheese dressing lumpy). John Winterton