The Benefits Of Freezing Fresh Food
We make great use of the freezers in our farm shops – and at home! In addition to the usual ice creams and frozen meals, we also freeze Meat, Bread, Fruit, Veg and Pastries.
Some people aren’t keen on the idea of frozen food, so please let us explain why we encourage everyone to befriend your freezer! We do have fresh meat, bread and pastries for people who know they will be cooking or eating straight away, but we aren’t always that organised, so here’s why we opt for frozen when shopping for our own family!
NO NASTIES!
First and foremost, no preservatives! Freezing is the oldest way we know to keep food fresh. It’s completely natural and preserves the quality of the meat with no added nasties.
Have you ever had a craving for Calcium Propionate? Dying for a bit of Sodium metabisulphite? We didn’t think so. These common preservatives do nothing for our health.
What we do crave is natural beef, from a sustainable source, seasoned with an organic burger seasoning mix, cooked to perfection. Or sourdough bread, toasted with too much melted butter. Or a croissant freshly baked, but we don’t want to get up at 5am to laminate dough.
In our Farm Shops you can pick up frozen croissants, scones and brioche buns just for this!
PREVENT FOOD WASTE
How many times have you had to sniff something in the fridge and chuck it in the compost – it’s such a waste of money, energy and precious good food!
We hate (hate, hate!) throwing away food. Freezing means the meat, bread, fruit or veg will wait happily until you are ready to cook it, and you always have something there for when the kids surprise you with a gang of hungry friends!
Preventing food waste applies to the producer as well as the consumer. Many big shops, restaurants and even butchers order cuts of meat from a huge supplier with a large pool of meats. As small producers we don’t. For our meat, we send one animal at a time to the butcher. We send what we need fresh (burgers and steaks to the restaurants for example), but we wouldn’t be able to eat or sell a whole cow in a few days, so we put some in the freezer and just take what we need from it.
PRESERVE QUALITY
Lastly, it tastes just as good, and is just as nutritious! All food loses nutrients the longer it sits out due to oxygen exposure. This doesn’t happen if you freeze it straight away. Fresh food that’s been kept out longer will have less nutrition than food that was frozen fresh. This applies to bread, fruits, meat, fish and more!
For meat, the night before we want it we put it from the freezer to the fridge to thaw. Then we cook it in the oven, on a pan, under the grill – whatever suits! Just ensure it’s piping hot throughout (we recommend a meat thermometer as an essential kitchen gadget!)
For bread you can take out a loaf the night before to defrost if you know you’ll eat it all, or you can slice before freezing and toast straight from frozen – we sell our organic sourdough sliced, it’s perfect for freezing!
For more advice on how to safely freeze different types of food check out this great resource from Stop Food Waste Ireland or this brilliant blog from Mummy Cooks!
In short, if you want to save money, energy, food and eat naturally, befriend your freezer!
Did you know – when you get a burger in Honestly, we can tell you which animal it came from, when it was born, how long it spent roaming the farms on grass and what it ate! Very different to the multi-animal mince elsewhere!
