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Everyone has little tips and tricks they use in the kitchen to make their life easier. I decided to share a few of mine. These all are related to the freezer.
Soup Blocks
I love soup! I eat it all year round. It is just one of those great comfort foods. I used to always have a few cans of soup in the pantry for those nights when I wanted easy soup. No longer. I know make large batches of soup when I have free time and freeze it. This way, I pop the soup out of the freezer into a pot, and I have hot, homemade soup in a few minutes.
After doing this a couple of times, I found that large tupperware containers of soup can really hog the freezer space. So I came up with a better solution. I now put my soup into freezer Ziploc bags. I place the bags on a cookie sheet so they are flat and then put them into the freezer. After they are frozen solid, you then have flat sheets of soup that you can stack up on top of each other and place side by side like books. Gives you lots more room in the freezer!
This also works great for stock, sauces, or any other liquid you want to freezer. It also makes for easy portions. I use small and large bags so I can have single serve or multiple serve.
Ginger Root
Ginger is one of those great ingredients that I don't use very often. I love it, but I have t have just the right recipe to use it in. I probably use it about every other week or so. The problem is, you can't buy just a small piece of ginger at the grocery store. Instead you get this huge hunk of root. Most of the time I use about a tablespoon or so of the ginger and the rest rots in my veggie drawer. Such a waste.
Now I have a solution. When you get home from the store, peel the entire ginger piece, put in a freezer bag, and throw in the freezer. The ginger will stay fresh for about 3 months. Whenever you need fresh ginger, pull it out of the freezer and grate it on your handy microplane. Works perfectly and keeps me from wasting good ginger.
Parmesan Throw Aways
I'm a parmesan snob. I've become hooked on fresh parmesan and no longer care for the can stuff. Nothing compares to the taste of parmesan freshly cut or grated from a real block of parmesan. If you buy the real stuff, it always has a rind on the outside. I used to just throw this away since I didn't think it was good for anything. I was completely wrong!
You can throw the parmesan rind into a sauce, stock, or soup and it will infuse the liquid with that yummy parmesan goodness. Nothing overpowering, just a wonderful low note of that parmesan saltiness. It's great!
So now when I have a leftover parmesan rind, I throw it in a freezer baggie and put in the freezer for later. Whenever I need a little extra something for my sauce, I pull out one of the rinds from the freezer and drop it in.
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