The frozen food truth is out!

[Workingman]

At last.

The number of people I know who have fallen into the trap of believing the myths and legends about frozen food is enormous. Now, thankfully, the FSA has come up with the truth.

The amount of food thrown away because of years false truths, mainly promoted by the frozen food industry and dietry articles in magazines, is disgusting. Hopefully the new guidelines will prevent some of it, though I am not so sure.

Once people have got ideas planted and reinforced in their heads they are hard to remove. Some of my friends, and even my children, are almost evangelical about dealing with frozen food. "Oh, you cannot freeze that, it has already been cooked" they say, then at the next turn they are taking a frozen pre-cooked ready-meal out of the freezer to bung in the microwave.

[molly]

I pay no attention to freezer guidelines.

I am trying very hard to use up food in our freezer at the moment. We had smoked salmon over the weekend that had been in there for at least 18 months and it was lovely. Hadn't deteriorated at all. I think they normally recommend only three months in the freezer for fish. We also had some cooked roast beef, no idea how long that had been in there, and it too was delicious.

Need to go and have a rummage today to see what else is in there

Clearing the freezer all started because we needed to freeze a teddy bear that had moths so we had to eat some food to make room.

[saundra]

Ho Molly I have never heard about freezing a teddy bear because it has moths
Have to say I'm on my own so I use my freezer all the time I take no notice of guidelines

[Kaz]

You can freeze soft toys for kids with asthma, it kills the dust mites

Well they found a woolly mammoth fairly intact, so freezing meat must work pretty well I once had a freezer with so-called guidelines printed on the underside of the lid: Bread - 3 months, Veggies - 6 months, Meat - 1 year etc.

Stuff and nonsense!

[molly]

:lol: Ho Molly I have never heard about freezing a teddy bear because it has moths

My grown up daughter's Steiff teddy, which we bought when she was a baby, was losing all his fur so I took him to the Teddy Bear Hospital Ted was given a full medical and the "doctor" found one moth larvae though the moth was long gone but the treatment was 48 hours in the freezer, just in case. No prescription necessary.

[Workingman]

Molly, do you put dates on things?

I never do, and I often find UFOs (Unidentified Frozen Objects) lurking in there. I have to say I just cook them and taste them and if all seems OK, eat them. Never had a fail yet.

[Diflower]

Nothing goes off, but some things don't last as well.
After a few months meat dries out a bit, but it depends on size too.
We bought a lovely big joint of beef once, then the visitors couldn't come and we saved it till they did, just over a year later.
Because of the size it was just as good as fresh, but smaller pieces wouldn't be quite as good.

We buy Tesco's 4 small baguettes for £1 (daft not to!) and 3 of them go straight into the freezer, as does any of a large baguette not eaten the same day. But I try not to leave it in there long, the crust starts to crumble off.

Today I made a (huge!) banana and walnut loaf in the breadmaker. I've cut it in half, and tomorrow when it's easier to slice will slice one half and freeze, the slices come out and into the toaster

[molly]

Molly, do you put dates on things?
.

Nope, I don't but the date was printed on the salmon pack, that's how I knew how old it was. I too just cook it and eat it and everything has always been fine.