Adventures in Meat Freezing

Recently I made a foraging expedition to Gary’s Market in Stephenson, upper Michigan, and bought a family pack of boneless pork chops, two rib eye steaks, and a package of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs. So I had to get busy packaging them for the freezer.

I have two freezers, really. The one on the top of my fridge, and an upright freezer on the back porch. Now, any book on food preservation will tell you that the freezer on/in your fridge is not great for food storage. It’s best to have a dedicated freezer for that. I’ve heard that upright ones are easier to use than chest freezers. If you are low-income like me, the money to buy a freezer may worry you. But you may be able to save by buying in bulk or direct from a farmer if you only have a freezer to put your meat in.

I do sometimes use the freezer compartment in the fridge to store some meat and veggies I am actively eating. But I worried about the temps— some ice cubes melted and then refroze in there (just when I needed them for a smoothie.) I got a pair of freezer/fridge digital thermometers which not only tell the current temp, but the high and low temp. I put one in each freezer. The freezer compartment is temperamental, in part because I often accidentally pull it open when closing the fridge door. 

The thermometers came in pairs and I didn’t need four, so for my fridge I put in one of the thermometers I use in my egg incubator (I make my own baby poultry at home.) I find that when I set the fridge to the cooler temp I prefer, it makes an unholy racket from time to time, usually at 3 am, and so I fear that my fridge will need replacement soon.

FREEZER PACKAGING

There are many ways to pack food for the freezer. I use canning jars to freeze single portions of soups/stews/curries. For meat, I use plastic freezer bags. I get gallon and quart freezer bags at the dollar stores, and pint freezer bags, which are harder to find, at Gary’s Market. 

I put a single portion of meat into the smallest bag it will fit in, and put several bags of the same type of item (pork chops, beef steaks, bison meat patties) into a bigger bag, often a gallon bag. I write the DATE and type of food on every bag. ALWAYS DATE YOUR FROZEN FOOD! Frozen food doesn’t last forever and you don’t want to eat something you should have thrown away in 2004.

USING FROZEN MEAT

Be sure and regularly USE your frozen meat. Every evening at bedtime take out the amount of meat you will be using the next day, and put it in the fridge. You might put a bit of vinaigrette dressing on some of the meat as a marinade. I use the vinaigrette recipes from Dana Carpender’s 500 Low-Carb Recipes (2002.) I’ve been grilling my meat most days on my George Foreman grill, using the Baking Pan for the bottom plate so I won’t lose any of the healthy fat I pay good money for.

BUYING MEAT IN BULK?

The next move for me is to buy some meat direct from a farmer, in whatever quantity I have to buy. I’d want some beef— grass-fed if I can get it. I also might get one of my lambs butchered if I can find out where to go with it. (I think my Serbian-American friends who have butchered for me before might be getting too old for it, and plus they don’t cut it up enough or package it well. Though they DID do it for free when they did it, and they have also been known to give me free frozen venison or pork.)

I never used to be a big meat-eater before I went low-carb— I was too busy being addicted to carbs to learn to cook meat— but I’ve found I really enjoy some of the meat I cook— even more than I enjoy Rice-a-Roni, and I used to eat that stuff all the time.