Lara Ferroni Photography

This is probably old news for most people, but hey, it’s been over 15 years since I really spent much time cooking and I wasn’t ever very good at keeping a kitchen stocked. But, I was flipping through How to Break an Egg to see if there were any good tips that caught my eye, and I started noticing how many left over ingredients you can freeze.

How To Break An Egg:
1,453 Kitchen Tips, Food Fixes,
Emergency Substitutions and
Handy Techniques

I had done a lot of Thai cooking last week, and had a ton of left over, fresh stuff. Thai Ginger, limes, coconut milk. My normal tendency is to put them back in the fridge, wait a week or so (who’s counting, really), and then throw them away after they’ve gone bad. There are obvious problems with this. First, I’m cooking more, and I’m quickly running out of room. Secondly, I end up throwing a ton of good stuff away. Well, no more. I found out I can freeze just about everything. It won’t be as good as fresh on the next go around, but not everything requires from plant to pot freshness.

For freezing the ginger, the book recommends peeling it and freezing it directly. You can grate it frozen, and it will thaw almost instantly. I tried grating it before freezing. That might have been a mistake, but we’ll see how it goes.

Another tip I got from my neighbor is freezing the juice from left over limes and lemons. Just squeeze them right into an ice tray. One medium lime makes about 3 cubes. Once frozen, pop them out of the tray, and save in a plastic bag. Works great for recipes that call for the juice, or even better in a fresh margarita. I recommend the silicon ice trays if you have them. These are particularly cool:

Penquin Ice Cube Tray