Name: Which Frozen Ingredients You Should Cook With | Techniquely with Lan Lam
Uploaded: 2025-02-01T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 7 min 9 s
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I'm a huge fan of cooking with frozen fruits and vegetables, and I'm not talking about adding them to smoothies, I'm talking about making delicious food that actually benefits from using frozen over fresh.

Frozen produce is a great way to cut out a lot of prep work and save time.

It's democratizing in that it gives us access to produce that has a short growing season or just isn't available locally.

You can even take advantage of the damage that freezing does to create better dishes.

I have two pints of thawed strawberries here.

They went into the freezer at the same time, they came out at the same time.

So why did this one release so much more juice than this one?

This sample, it was spread out on a baking sheet, and this one I froze in a storage container.

On the baking sheet, these are exposed to all of the air currents in the freezer, while these berries, they're insulated by the air trapped in that container.

That trapped air, it slows freezing, and that's the reason for the difference in juices lost.

When we pop food into the freezer, water in its cells turns into ice crystals and expands, pushing against the cell walls, which damages them, causing that characteristic softening we've all noticed in thawed food.

The size of those crystals and how sharp and stabby they are is dependent on how long it takes the food to freeze.

The faster they freeze, the smaller the crystals, the smaller the crystals, the less damage they do.

We already saw how much juice these slow freezing ones lost, but that texture is also obvious in the fruit itself.

This strawberry, it's still relatively firm, considering it was frozen.

This one, super soft, and it's almost like wringing out a sponge.

The souped up version of this is called IQF, or individual quick freezing.

It's something that producers do using their industrial freezers to help their product retain as much texture and juice as possible.

Even though they've done their best to preserve the integrity of their produce, there's no hiding the fact that it was frozen, right?

If I were to serve you a strawberry shortcake made with these frozen berries, or even these, you'd notice and you'd object, and rightfully so.

But if I made these into a pie or a mousse, I don't think you'd know the difference.

Successfully cooking with frozen produce requires two things, knowing which fruits and vegetables to choose, and knowing which recipes will make the most of them.

Frozen produce is generally best in cooked applications because cooking is going to soften the food anyway.

That'll mask the softening caused by freezing, which means you can take advantage of the other benefits of frozen foods.

Nudie are a spinach and ricotta dumpling from Tuscany.

They're made by binding ricotta and spinach with egg and flour, then they're poached and served with a sauce.

The key to nudie that are airy and light is to use as little binder as possible, and to do that, you have to get rid of as much water from the cheese and spinach as you can.

Traditionally, a couple of bunches of spinach have to be washed, trimmed, blanched and shocked, squeezed dry, and then chopped.

And then you can start making the dumplings.

Or you can remember that freezing damages the cells and makes them release lots of juices, go defrost a package of spinach, and skip straight to squeezing out the excess water.

You can feel how tender these are just cutting through them with the fork.

These are exactly what you want in a cheese dumpling.

There's just enough binder in there for everything to hold together.

Besides making cooking easier and less time-consuming, frozen foods also open the door to more recipes.

For example, pasta piselli is a quick and easy dish of pasta, pancetta, pecorino, and peas.

Should you only make this dish in the spring when peas are in season?

It's a quick and easy, delicious meal that'd be great any time of year.

If you work fast, it can be on the table in about 30 minutes, and you don't even have to defrost the peas.

Other frozen produce to cook with are edamame, baby lima beans, pearl onions, artichoke hearts, pineapple, peaches, sour or sweet cherries.

Let me know if I missed your favorite frozen produce.

All of these are great in cooked applications.

They'll also do well if chopped or pureed.

There are even times when frozen is better than fresh, even though there's no cooking involved.

A recipe that can take advantage of freezer damage is cranberry relish.

This dish is traditionally made by grinding or food processing fresh cranberries with sugar and an orange.

For me, it's got a little too much chew to it because those raw berries, they might be bruised by the food processor, but they're not tender.

To get the texture I'm after, I go with frozen instead.

I also swap out the orange for clementine to give the citrus side of the dish a little more character.

The results are a sweet tart side that's perfect for the Thanksgiving table.

Other times of year, I serve it with roasted butternut squash, grilled pork, or I'll just have it with some blue cheese on a cracker.

So that tiny dollop of cranberry relish, so flavorful.

Because it wasn't cooked, you didn't lose any aromas to cooking.

Because they were frozen, the cranberry bits are tender.

I worked on some iced teas a few years ago and learned that if you want to make, say, a raspberry iced tea, dropping a few berries into the glass, it's not going to do much for the flavor.

What you want to do is release as much berry juice as possible.

And the easiest way to do that is to start with berries whose cells have been damaged by freezing.

Just place raspberries in a bowl with basil, sugar, and lemon juice, and mash.

In a second bowl, steep some tea for four minutes before combining the two mixtures with ice water.

Let the whole thing steep for an hour, strain, and you've got a fruity iced tea that's bursting with berry flavor.

If you make this, you're never going to buy flavored iced teas again.

You get to customize how sweet you want it.

You can dial in the berry flavor and the basil flavor.

We all want to save time and money without sacrificing quality when we cook.

And frozen produce can be a great way to do this.

It opens up the door to recipes that call for ingredients that might not be available fresh.

There are so many ways to make frozen produce.

There are so many times when frozen is the best choice.

These were some of my favorite ways to use frozen produce.

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Which Frozen Ingredients You Should Cook With | Techniquely with Lan Lam

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