Homemade Semi-finished Products: Cook, Freeze, Reheat

Agree, it is much more convenient to come home after a hard day and immediately warm up a tasty and appetizing dish, and not stand at the stove and cook, fry, steam.

Agree, it is much more convenient to come home after a hard day and immediately warm up a tasty and appetizing dish, and not stand at the stove and cook, fry, steam. This can be done only with the help of semi-finished products. But most of the industrial semi-finished products can hardly be called healthy food, so it offers to cook dumplings, pancakes, pasties and other goodies at home and freeze for future use.

 

Cooking

Semi-finished products are associated with junk food, right? But what if we say that muffins are also a semi-finished product? There is nothing harmful in them if they are cooked and frozen properly. For breakfast, you can defrost pre-made blueberry muffins, ham, bacon and cheese muffins, or savory spring rolls. Take a classic muffin recipe, increase or decrease the amount of sugar to taste, and add toppings. You can freeze the dough in molds or a ready-made product.

 

You can freeze any dish - so lunch can become a semi-finished product. Bulgarian peppers stuffed with rice and chicken fillet, cheesecakes or savory pancakes with a boiled egg can be heated in the microwave in a few minutes. Hearty, simple, tasty, and most importantly - in the morning you do not need to get up an hour earlier and stand at the stove.

Even dinner can be thawed, reheated and served - a casserole of noodles and sausages, with minced meat or other meat is ideal for such a task. The same can be said about chicken nuggets, chebureks and dumplings - warmed up and ready, so on weekends you can prepare portions for the whole week.

Prepare and freeze classic dumplings according to this recipe >>>

Freezing

It would seem, how can a casserole retain its taste and aroma after freezing? Very simple - if you freeze it correctly.  

 

It is best to freeze the dish when it has completely cooled at room temperature and has stood in the refrigerator for several hours - there the temperature difference will be minimal, and the taste of the dish will be preserved. It is worth keeping food in the freezer for no more than two months, because due to the constant opening of the freezer door, the temperature regime changes.

For freezing, it is best to use plastic bowls, tight bags or glass forms, depending on how you need to heat the dish and whether you need to keep its shape. You can simply lay out the blanks on the board - if space allows. If these are cutlets or dumplings, then freeze them first on the board, spreading them out so that they do not touch each other. Then transfer to a form or a special bag. Raw vegetables should be washed, peeled, drained of water and then frozen.

 

Warming up

With heating, everything is the same as with freezing - you need to gradually change the temperature of the dish so that it retains its taste. For example, do not immediately send the casserole to the oven for heating, but first put it in the refrigerator, then on the table and after the final defrosting, heat it up. 

By the way, glass vessels or containers are suitable for warming up - you can freeze the dish in them, and then immediately heat them up in the oven without transferring them to another dish. During freezing, foods lose moisture, and gradual defrosting will allow them to absorb the same lost moisture.