When I was teaching myself how to cook, frozen food saved me.
I was in college, and my cooking experiments weren't always pretty. I'd leave failed dishes—I remember a quiche in particular—to linger in the refrigerator until they practically grew legs and walked away, and the produce bin would become a toxic waste zone of neglected uncooked vegetables purchased with good intentions. These failures were devastating to someone living on a budget. I simply couldn't afford to waste food.
So it was with great delight that I learned some ingredients were actuallybetterto buy frozen than fresh out of season. Unlike their precious, ephemeral, expensive, fresh cousins, I could ignore frozen fruits and vegetables until I was ready to use them. Also? Frozen food happens to be super cheap.
My gateway frozen food was spinach. I was cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner, and looking for something cheap and green to add to the menu. Frozen spinach to the rescue: a recipe for creamed spinachI found on this very websitecalled for frozen spinach, and further research revealed that, unless it's in season, high-quality frozen spinach is often better than the fresh stuff. Not to mention easier to deal with.
I was hooked. I'd buy a neat square of frozen spinach every time I went to the grocery store and soon found it was an easy way to add vegetables to pretty much anything. I'd mix defrosted and drained frozen spinach with scrambled eggs in the morning, combine it with black beans and cheese for an enchilada filling, layer it into lasagnas, and stir it into soups.
Soon I was buying all kinds of frozen vegetables. Frozen corn became another staple, as did green beans. I'd buy frozen raspberries to cook with oatmeal, and frozen strawberries to add to margaritas. (I was in college, after all.) I'd buy fresh when I could afford it, or when it was in season, but frozen food formed the backbone of the very first foods I cooked for myself and my friends.
This week, Epicurious is taking a long, hard look at how frozen foods can improve your cooking. Thankfully, frozen food has gotten alotbetter than it was when I was in college, and today you can find everything from prepped and cubed butternut squash to galangal andfresh turmericin the freezer aisle.
Frozen foods can save you money and time; can expand your culinary horizons with international ingredients; and are a major help forcooking #wasteless(something I'm always striving to do). But the best part? They're good to hang out in the freezer for a while—which means that spinach is nowhere near growing legs and walking away.
