How to organise your freezer

Is that large icy box in the corner of your kitchen kept neat and tidy – or jammed with space wasting half-full tubs of leftover chilli con carne and mince pies?

Justine Pattison shows Katy Salter how to maximise freezer space. 

Justine Pattison has four freezers: one in the kitchen, one in the garage and two in the dining room. Why? Pattison used them for the years spent researching and writing Freeze, her new cookbook. The result is a useful guide, filled with techniques for saving time, money and space, and contemporary recipes designed to work well and look good defrosted.

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Justine has come to give my one, average-sized freezer a makeover. There are problem areas – for a start, the homemade mince pies. In March. She shows up with her kit: freezer bags, Sharpies and foil, plus two large cooler boxes of food, and takes a look at what's languishing in my mini-Siberia. Justine swoops on the mince pies. "These really need to come out," she says, suggesting I crumble them into ice cream. "You don't have very good rotation," she adds gently.

Wasting precious space is my biggest crime, and a common mistake. To whit, a sack of chips taking up a drawer, tubs of leftover chilli with air at the top. "You're freezing good things, just in the wrong containers," Justine explains. Fresh meat and fish shouldn't be frozen in their large film-covered trays, she says, alighting on a box containing chicken legs. "Wrap them in foil – it saves space and they won't develop so many ice crystals."

I claw back credit for gravy in small pots, bananas for smoothies, and foil-wrapped cake slices: "I'm totally impressed … you just need to label them."

Justine's top tip for preparing food to take up less space is "flat-freezing". She labels a zipper bag with the food type, number of portions, freezing and best before dates. When testing optimum freezing times she found soups, stocks and sauces were best used in under six months before the flavours deteriorate, while raw meat and fish gets "a bit icy" after just a month. Justine pours pasta sauce into it, pressing down to spread it almost to the top of the bag. We repeat the exercise with curry sauce and pumpkin soup, before freezing the bags on a baking tray to keep them flat. When frozen, "stack the bags and then you can leaf through them like a book. It's quicker to thaw, and you can snap off the amount you need."

Another of Justine's techniques is preparing "super-quick strips". Cut meat or fish into small chunks and freeze with space between them on a tray covered with clingfilm. Place in small, labelled containers and use what you need in curries or stir-fries. But she  cautions against "putting a whole load of fresh food in the freezer at the same time, as the temperature will rise too much".

Frozen food isn't fashionable, but it should be – it saves time and money, and cuts down on waste. Justine says: "Lots of people don't understand just how many foods they can freeze and how to do it correctly. Almost everything can be frozen apart from salad."

My freezer – once a wasteland of chips and unmarked pots is now an organisational triumph. I have pens and labels in the drawer. I spend the next week cooking mainly from the freezer and save time. I make Justine's Thai curry with prawns in 15 minutes, break off chunks of soup for lunch and finally eat some mince pies. My next "big shop" is smaller. I'm thinking of my freezer as more than a receptacle for fish fingers. After all, you wouldn't keep any other gadget that size in your kitchen if you weren't using it properly.

by Katy Salter