The way to Use a Freezer as a Cooking Software

The wonders of the freezer as a tool for preserving meals are obvious, nevertheless the freezer can do rather more than merely retailer meals. It may be used as a cooking instrument. A number of of those strategies have been written about on Extreme Eats sooner than. There’s cryo-shucking clams and completely different shellfish; cryo-blanching greens and herbs like basil; tenderizing octopus; and hardening up squishy pork fat to make slicing less complicated.

Nonetheless, there are completely different prospects. Within the occasion you might have been to hunt the recommendation of the Chinese language language home-cooking playbook, you’d uncover an entire host of strategies that use the freezer to rework the textures of meals and enhance flavors in methods through which might be powerful to comprehend in every other case.

A lot of these strategies predate utilizing modern freezers. In Northeast China, it was frequent observe to retailer fruits, greens, and completely different parts exterior the home all through the winter, uncovered to snowy sub-zero temperatures. A number of of the parts might be saved there all via the season after which eaten inside the hotter months, nevertheless others might be cooked and eaten all through the chilly season. And when these parts have been launched once more indoors and thawed, they’d be markedly utterly completely different, altered in elementary strategies. For instance how the freezing course of can change parts, and for ideas for strategies to profit from these changes to offer delicious meals, allow us to check out the exact examples beneath, each of which has an accompanying recipe.

Roasted Frozen Sweet Potatoes

My favorite utility of this idea will also be one in all many best. In the midst of the winter, in numerous East Asian cities, along with Hong Kong, the place I grew up, you’ll uncover roasted sweet potato distributors parked on highway corners. On one end of a small cart is a big wok full of pebbles, heated with coal. The vendor continuously tosses the pebbles inside the wok along with sweet potatoes to offer fantastically caramelized wok-roasted sweet potatoes with vivid, fluffy flesh and a thin, papery, toasted pores and pores and skin. In cities with colder climates, the distributors are able to persistently acquire this cloud-like texture by first freezing your entire sweet potatoes sooner than they’re roasted, each by letting them naturally freeze on the cart in ambient sub-zero temps or, in not lower than in a few circumstances I do know of in Hong Kong, by deliberately inserting them in a freezer.

As a result of the sweet potato freezes, the water that’s contained within the sweet potato varieties ice crystals, which have sharp and jagged edges that puncture the cell partitions of the flesh, altering the texture of the potato such that when it’s roasted, it comes out additional tender and fluffy. Based totally on extra testing of this technique by Tim Chin (spoiler: he found this freeze-roast approach produces in all probability probably the most delicious bakes sweet potato by far), there’s an extra benefit to the freezing step. By reducing the potato’s starting temperature after which roasting it whereas nonetheless frozen, the potato spends rather more time in a extremely explicit temperature zone between 135°F to 170°F (57°C to 76°C), the temperature fluctuate whereby a pure enzyme inside the potato referred to as amylase begins working additional time to rework sophisticated starches into sweet maltose sugar. That’s one factor Kenji takes advantage of in his roasted sweet potato and mashed sweet potato recipes as successfully.

The result is a gorgeously roasted sweet potato with a deep sweetness and a texture paying homage to sweet potato pie. It’s implausible eaten straight out-of-hand, nevertheless I moreover whipped up a simple nevertheless flavorful presentation whereby the roasted frozen sweet potato is topped with mild and tangy whipped creme fraiche and sprinkled with granola.

I’ve found that this technique works most interesting on sweeter types of sweet potatoes, resembling purple-fleshed sweet potatoes or Carolina ruby yams, the place the naturally extreme moisture content material materials exaggerates the impression of the freezing. On the flip side, roasting frozen white-fleshed Okinawan sweet potatoes (and customary Russet potatoes) shouldn’t be as environment friendly.

Ice-Poached (“Cryo-Macerated”) Fruits

The delicacies of Northeast China is deeply rooted in native agricultural practices, definitely one in all which is freezing fruits inside the winter. One occasion of this are the Asian pears which might be frozen and thawed repeatedly until the once-beige skins flip black and the interiors soften and burst with the juices.

The traditional technique of consuming the pear is to puncture the pores and pores and skin of the fruit alongside together with your enamel and suck up the pure syrup, after which you’ll eat the fruit in greater bites. The freezing and thawing course of transforms the pear, picked when it’s exhausting and bitter, proper right into a delight by itself. It nonetheless retains its raw pear style and tastes just about impossibly modern, nevertheless its texture is easy, with a slight crispness, as if it had been expertly poached.

What happens contained in the pear is very like what happens contained in the sweet potato, nevertheless in reality the pears aren’t subsequently cooked. Nonetheless, the repeated freezing and thawing causes huge, slow-forming ice crystals to interrupt apart the cell partitions inside the fruit flesh, releasing style compounds and sugars. The strategy moreover damages the pores and pores and skin, inflicting it to oxidize (and thus blacken), nevertheless the pores and pores and skin stays intact, and I’ve found that it naturally protects the fruit flesh from freezer burn, making it potential to go away the pears inside the freezer for a variety of months with no unwell outcomes. To borrow a time interval from wine making that describes freezing grapes sooner than fermentation to weaken the skins and extract additional tannin and style, the pear is efficiently “cryo-macerated.”

The strategy use for cryo-macerated or ice-poached pears is used for various fruits in Northeast China. Persimmons, peaches, and cherries are all subjected to an equivalent course of to create snacks that in the intervening time are eaten 12 months spherical. And the strategy has huge functions, resembling in my additional composed recipe for the ice-poached pears: it’s a deal with “poached” pears served with a lightweight syrup, on this case flavored with Chinese language language medicinal parts like goji berries, apricot kernels, and osmanthus.

To extend on this idea exterior of typical Chinese language language delicacies, one can take into consideration freezing fruits like apples, plums, and apricots to jumpstart the strategy of extracting sweetness and style from them as successfully, with out having to arrange dinner them down, for raw jams, jellies, cobblers, or desserts.

Extraordinarily-Absorbent Frozen Tofu

In a savory context, frozen tofu is a popular occasion of altering the texture of an ingredient by freezing it. Frozen tofu takes on a yellow hue and a additional porous texture, which not solely offers the tofu chewiness and a meat-like bounce, however moreover a sponge-like top quality that permits it to take in liquids and ship additional style in every chew. The impression is achieved, as quickly as as soon as extra, with the help of ice crystals, which enhance as they sort, tearing apart the tofu’s coagulated protein development. When the tofu thaws, the water drains out via this web of lacerations, leaving tiny pockets of air all via.

To strengthen this impression, it’s best to softly squeeze the thawed tofu between your arms, expressing rather more water and rising the tofu’s absorptive potential whereas concentrating the flavour of the tofu itself.

Frozen tofu is eaten most continuously in scorching pots, braises, soups, and saucy dishes the place the spongy texture can soak up the cooking liquid. Even inside the best of liquids, as in my recipe for frozen tofu simmered with Napa cabbage, pork, and somewhat bit ginger and garlic, the tofu turns into juicy and substantial in a implies that modern tofu merely is not going to.

Cryo-Blanching Greens

Blanching greens entails in a short while boiling them in salted water until merely tender, then beautiful them in ice water to chill out them down and stop the cooking. The idea is to tenderize the greens and put together dinner them merely enough whereas retaining their modern style and vivid inexperienced shade. The freezer, as a result of it appears, might be utilized to comparable impression.

By freezing skinny greens resembling string beans, peas, asparagus and further, ice crystals quickly sort, puncturing cell partitions to create a like-cooked texture whereas sustaining a up to date raw style. Study additional regarding the science of the strategy proper right here.

Cryo-Shucking Clams

Shucking clams by hand takes somewhat bit observe sooner than it turns into a quick and easy course of, nevertheless even for a lot of who’re adept at it, shucking quite a few clams continues to be a chore. Fortuitously, the freezer might be put to good use proper right here, and all it takes is somewhat bit superior prep. By inserting dwell clams in a freezer, the chilly itself kills them. As quickly as frozen, all it is a should to do is sit up for the clams to defrost and they also’ll pop open one after the opposite, ready to be able to use in irrespective of dish you need.

This doesn’t make sense to utilize in all clam-cooking eventualities, since you may additionally open clams by cooking them, nevertheless in any event the place you want to put together dinner the clam meat with out the shells, it is a wonderful strategy to have in your pocket.

Totally different Capabilities

These are just a few examples of how freezers might be utilized to regulate every the texture and style of meals. When considering how else to utilize the freezer in comparable strategies, it’s helpful to keep in mind two (related) outcomes freezing has on parts—softening and moisture loss—to seek out out whether or not or not using the freezer is maybe an excellent suggestion.

When considering softening, ask your self whether or not or not there’s liable to be any revenue to attaining a looser, additional tender, and doubtless spongier texture. Root greens like beets and taro, for example, could revenue from the softening outcomes of the freezer, as that’s the final phrase texture we regularly seek for. Nevertheless leafy greens, cabbage, or Brussels sprouts, alternatively, would turn into limp and unappealing for a stir-fry whereby you want the greens to retain somewhat little bit of crispness.

As for moisture loss, it’s an inevitable impression when freezing most parts, due to all that cellular hurt from the ice crystals. Whereas it actually works wonders with sweet potatoes, pears, tofu, and further, it might be a difficulty with parts like meats, the place you want to retain as loads moisture as potential. If uncertain, though, don’t forget that there is little harm in experimentation. It is attainable you may merely come throughout a very new choice to put collectively and experience definitely one in all your favorite meals.

Dec 2021