How much can you and how to properly store stuffed peppers in the freezer
Homemade food preparation is convenient in our daily life. After a hard day, many housewives have practically no free time to cook dinner for the whole family. In such cases, homemade semi-finished products prepared for the future become a real salvation. Pepper with minced meat is rightfully considered one of the favorite blanks. Find out how much raw or cooked stuffed peppers you can keep in the freezer.
Optimal storage conditions and locations
If you freeze a semi-finished product, the hostess will always have delicious homemade dishes at hand. The advantage of a frozen vegetable with minced meat is that it does not lose its original properties after defrosting. Appearance and taste are preserved. Storage at sub-zero temperatures is suitable for cored parts and heat-treated semi-finished products.
Optimum storage temperature: -19 ... -30 degrees. Usefulness, valuable pepper substances are maximally preserved during quick freezing. It helps to maintain the shape, density and juiciness of the product.
Baked stuffed peppers can be stored in the refrigerator at a temperature of 0 ... + 5 degrees. The shelf life is thus considerably reduced.
The semi-finished product is packaged in portions, since repeated thawing of the dish is not allowed. The vegetable with minced meat is put in bags, trying to completely remove the air inside. The packaging is tightly bound so that air and foreign odors do not enter the container. In order not to forget the date of packaging, markings are put on the packaging.
How to freeze properly for long term storage?
Prepare the dish according to the recipe. Peppers stuffed with minced meat can be stored in two ways: raw and cooked.
Raw
The cutting board is covered with cling film. Semi-finished products are laid on them so that they do not touch each other. First, they are sent to the refrigerator shelf, cooled for about an hour. After cooling, the raw materials are sent to the freezer.
A cutting board with stuffed vegetables is placed at the bottom of the freezer shelf. The minimum storage temperature should be -18 degrees. If the camera has a quick freeze function, it is advisable to use it.
After 3 hours, you can take out the semi-finished product and check its degree of freezing. If the structure of the vegetable is soft, it is sent for additional freezing. It is not recommended to leave pepper and minced meat on the cutting board for more than 8 hours, otherwise it will absorb extraneous odors. Thus, the taste of the product will be significantly reduced.
After the semi-finished product is completely frozen, it is packed in airtight bags or containers. The plastic container is additionally wrapped with cling film so that air does not get inside.It is convenient to pack pepper in portions, depending on the number of people in the family.
Cooked
Heat-treated pepper with minced meat is left on the table to cool the product to room temperature. Then the finished dish is placed in the refrigerator for several hours. After cooling, they are stacked in portions in a container.
If there is sauce, add it in portions to the pepper. The container is closed with a lid, wrapped in foil and placed in the freezer. The dish freezes together with the sauce, it will no longer be possible to divide it into portions. Therefore, the product is immediately packaged so that each part can be thawed and cooked separately at a time.
Simply thaw a cooked dish in one of two ways: in the refrigerator or in the microwave. Then the stuffed peppers are heated on the stove, in the oven or in the microwave.
Leftover cooking sauce can be frozen separately in a container. A little space is left in the container so that the walls of the container do not burst under pressure during freezing.
About shelf life
It is possible to preserve the product for a long time with its original nutritional and external qualities, under certain conditions. The shelf life of a raw semi-finished product reaches 1.5 months. Once cooked, the dish can be stored for up to 4 months in the freezer. The product purchased in store is stored according to the date indicated on the packaging.
Frozen bell peppers are ideal winter preparations that can be prepared as a daily or holiday meal. Subject to the conditions and shelf life of the semi-finished product after thawing, it will retain useful properties, delicate and pleasant structure and aroma.