Let's face it: No matter how many Turkey 101 or “Easiest Turkey Day Ever” pieces you read, Thanksgiving is, for most people, a tricky, hair-pulling, exhausting holiday—with a hell of a payoff. The home cook would certainly be forgiven for wanting to relive the experience from soup to nuts (or cranberries to pies) a month later…without doing a lick of work.
So if you find yourself longingly eyeing your freezer and the bevy of pies, sweet potato casseroles, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and turkey you have lying about after the feast, take heart: You can freeze some of that grub.
Zeb Stevenson, executive chef of Atlanta, Georgia restaurantWatershed, was born in the Midwest and has had to cook “one or two” Thanksgiving dinners in his career, he laughs. He divided up the main T-Day players into three categories, based on their durability in the deep freeze.
Safety caveat: The USDA suggests you pack up food “within two hours of cooking,” stash them in smaller containers to cool them more rapidly, and quickly move them to the fridge or freezer. (You want to avoid that bacteria-friendly 40-140 degree range.) If you suspect you’ll have leftovers (or if, like any wise person, you'vedeliberately made extraso you'lldefinitelyhave them), keep clean, dry resealable containers handy. When you’re ready to tuck into your feast again, pop frozen sealed containers into the fridge overnight, then unwrap and warm them the next day.
The USDA says, “Leftovers can be kept in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days or frozen for 3 to 4 months.” That doesn’t mean they’ll taste the same after that long, though. “I wouldn’t freeze anything longer than four to six weeks,” said Stevenson. “The flavor will degrade over time.” So recreate Thanksgiving in December and not, say, on May Day.
Don't Freeze
“I am not an infallible genius,” said Stevenson, “but I would just eat the damn pie.” If you have leftover pies aplenty, you or a lucky friend or family member should tuck into it at some point in the coming days. (Think: Breakfast apple pie and pumpkin pie—it could be worse!) “The crust is what's really gonna suffer [if you freeze it],” Stevenson tells us, “because freezing expands water, and there's water in pie crust: It'll make that crust mushy once it's thawed again, and it’s not going to be the same." The sole exception? “I might freeze a pumpkin pie,” because it contains less water than the average fruit pie.
Same goes for stuffing, for much same the reason. Thanks to how much bread, stock, and water is at play, you’re looking at the possibility of a “mushy mess” when most stuffing is reheated, Stevenson warns.
Maybe Freeze
Casseroles and mashed potatoes are in this middle territory. “I wince a little bit at the thought of freezing mashed potatoes, but that's because I’m so, so particular,” Stevenson says. Still, he admits that most casseroles freeze pretty well, as do mashed sweet potatoes. He suggests reheating casseroles at 325 degrees, with “a couple of lumps of butter on top” and covered with foil for 3/4 of their reheating time. When they are warm in the center, uncover them and crank up the heat for the last few minutes to get a bit of crispiness. If you cook them at a high temperature too early, the “outsides will scorch before the inside gets up to temperature.”
Freeze It!
“Green beans, gravy, turkey and cranberry sauce all freeze well,” says Stevenson. The major caveat? “Squeeze all the air out of your bags—air's the thing that will lead to them gettingfreezer burn and crystallized.” No worries if you don’t own a cheffy vacuum sealer; just roll and squeeze out as much air as you can. Or find freezer-safe containers just large enough to fit what you're freezing to minimize on air exposure. “If nothing else,” says Stevenson, “that’ll help it stay good in the freezer longer.”
