Putting Food By - Janet Greene [96]
CONVERSIONS FOR FREEZING
Do look at the conversions for metrics, with their workable roundings-off, and for altitude—in Chapter 3—and apply them.
How Big a Freezer?
Some advisers recommend 6 cubic feet of freezer space for each person in the family. A cubic foot holds about 35 pounds of food ideally, but actually a good deal less because some foods are more dense than others (pork loin roast takes only a little more space than a loaf of Italian bread, which of course weighs less). Further, manufacturers’ sales brochures describing cubic-foot sizes in freezers are sometimes approximate, so check the specifications and measurements to determine the actual usable interior space.
Of all the ways to put food by, freezing limits storage room most severely, so what you freeze should be given careful thinking-through beforehand. If your freezer is to be more than a place to stash random things you’re not going to use right away, figure out a system of priorities. A good rule of thumb is to assign freezer space first to the more expensive and heavier foods, and to ones that can’t be preserved so well any other way. Therefore, plan to freeze meats and seafood; and plan to freeze certain vegetables (prime example, broccoli) and certain fruits (prime example, strawberries—assuming you don’t want all of them in jam), and allot room for some favorite main-dish combinations or desserts.
What Type?
To do its job, the freezer must have adequate controls, no warm spots (“warm” being a constant temperature higher than the rest of the recommended Zero F/–18 C storage area). The small enclosed space for ice cubes or below 32 F/Zero C storage in some refrigerators sharp freezed will not maintain unless it has its own controls and its own outside door. Highly perishable foods with potentially high bacterial loads, especially poultry and meat, should not be stored for longer than a few weeks in such freezing compartments.
CHEST
The chest type with a top opening offers the best use of the space within it, and it holds its temperature better than do the uprights. Cold air sinks downward, so you don’t spill cold air when you lift the lid of a chest freezer, but cold air tumbles out from an upright whenever the door is opened.
Most chest freezers are not built to have automatic defrosting features. Therefore, a chest should be set up on 2-by-4s or some other supports at the corners to make it easier to draw off water when defrosting. It must be in a dry and cool place. Chests are more of a chore to keep reasonably clear of frost than upright models; however, frost builds up in them less readily than in uprights.
Also, more planning ahead is needed in filling the chest freezer, because you must bend over the freezer to paw through contents that were piled in any which way. Separate dessert materials from vegetables, meats, convenience foods, and oddments, and keep track of the more perishable foods in each category.
Whether they are chest or upright, self-defrosting freezers are more expensive to buy and to run than manually defrosted freezers. Chest freezers are less expensive to run than upright freezers, although this advantage decreases in self-defrosting models.
UPRIGHT
The upright ones with a refrigerator-type door of course take up less space in the room, but plenty of room must be allowed for the side-opening door: the angle between front of shelves and fully opened door must be at least 90 degrees. Uprights are easier to load and unload than the chests, and the little shelves on the door are handy for temporary storage of dabs and snippets.
More cold spills out when the door is opened than is lost with opening a chest; and irregular-shaped packages may tumble out at the same time.
TWO-DOOR COMBINATIONS
Side-by-side or stacked (one above the other) freezer-refrigerator combinations save floor space, and the freezer