My freezer is a very important place for us. Since I try very hard to stay away from processed food as much as possible, I try to keep my freezer stocked with things I made from scratch. Frozen food is the next best thing to fresh (very close to being as good). I try to cook everyday but alas, the best of us can't keep it going at all times(pun intended). I need break days!! And guess who comes to my rescue-yes, u guessed it right- my beloved freezer!! I want to share with you what this girl puts in their to help out on a rainy day.
Fried Rice -
I use Jasmine rice(the only thing I use it for, otherwise its always basmati). Jasmine rice is thicker, not as soft and sturdier, which is important for fried rice.
Semi-cooked parathas -
I choose to not trust the frozen parathas at Indian grocery stores. So what do I do? On a day I am feeling a little ambitious, I make a lot of dough(more on freezing dough later), roll out some parathas and cook them very lightly on both sides and freeze. Cooking them just a little helps ensure that they don't stick together while freezing and when you take them out of the freezer. It also makes finishing them later much quicker. I usually have some veggies in the freezer too, but sometimes we just eat the parathas with some butter and mint-cilantro(coriander) chutney.
Another great idea is to make parathas stuffed with paneer(homemeade paneer -
my recipe, works amazingly well for this), boiled potatoes, grated cauliflower, onions are a few things you can use for the stuffing. If you are not used to making dough and rolling it out, making stuffed parathas can be quite challenging and I would start out with the simple ones first. I promise, very soon you will find that you have become very efficient at the "dough- paratha making business". That would be the time to graduate to making the more complicated stuff.
Rajma (red kidney bean curry) -
We love rajma in our house, so whenever I cook it, I make extra and freeze it in individual serving-sized ziplock freezer bags. The advantage of doing this is that if you want to have it for lunch at work or school, you can just carry the ziplock. It will that by lunch time, then you just put it over some rice and heat it in the microwave.
I freeze a lot of other curries, vegetables, poultry and meat items too. Just about everything that we couldn't finish for the meal it was cooked for and we don't intend to eat it within the next two days.
Perogies and Wontons/Pot-stickers
Perogies are of central and eastern european origin and are very similar to the Chinese Wontons or Japanese gyoza/pot-stickers. The amazing thing about these is that even though every country/region has its own traditional filling for them, you can choose pretty much anything as the filling. I will have a recipe up very soon. I make mine with different fillings like potatoes, cheese, onions, ground pork, green onions, cabbage etc. Even though this is more like a snack/appetizer but I love to have them as my entire meal once in a while. If you really think about it, they have the ability to qualify as a complete meal with flour, meat, veggies, cheese- the whole deal.
Tadka/Chhaunk/vaghaar
A very common addition to numerous Indian dishes - dals, curries, dry vegetable preparations, it is probably made everyday in many Indian households. Growing up, it was definitely true for mine. The most basic way to prepare it, is to saute chopped onions in a little oil till they are somewhat brown and then add chopped tomatoes to it. This mixture is then cooked till the tomatoes start to ooze out some oil near the sides. I make the tadka, let it cool down a little and then put it in icecube-trays. They pop out easily once they are frozen. These "tadka cubes" can now be put in a ziplock bag. The other way is to put them in very small individual ziplock bags. I use the ones from the pharmacy section at walmart. I assume that it is safe to use these bags since these are pill bags. At meal times, this is what I do - 5-10 minutes to boil a cup of dal, 5 seconds to pop a bag of tadka in it. Its not just the time to cook it every time that I try to avoid. Whenever you make tadka, you would use a knife, chopping board and create trash, so it also involves a lot more dish washing and clean up time.
Garlic paste
I absolutely love garlic. The fact that it has many health benefits gives me an additional excuse to use it in pretty much everything I cook. Garlic paste is used in many Indian curries. It freezes very well. I take about 4 whole bulbs of garlic, separate them into cloves and put them in a bowl of water for about half an hour. See the magic after this as the cloves of garlic pop out of their skins with very little effort. I then put them in a blender with the chopping attachment and give it a quick whiz. At this point, I add some oil to the blender cup - 1 tbsp or so, to help with the "paste-making". The oil also helps to scoop out the frozen paste from a container just like you would scoop out ice-cream.
Ginger
Just peel it and throw it in a ziplock and into your freezer. There is not a better way to keep it fresh and easy to use. Just take out when you need some and grate it, put the rest back in the freezer.
Frozen fruits - strawberries, mangoes,
dough
chutneys
frozen vegetables
gravies - like harpal sokhis butter tomato gravy - goes with veggies and paneer
paneer
