3. Food Storage Tips
Tips on Freezing Food
•As with storing fresh foods, suitable packaging, correct temperature and food hygiene will enhance the quality of the food you are freezing.
•Avoid putting hot foods into the freezer. First let them cool until they reach room temperature.
•Make sure that all foods for freezing are of a high quality, and suitable for freezing.
•Use packaging material that is odourless and airproof (such as plastic bags) to store food in so different foods can be mixed without affecting the quality. Make sure that it is airtight. Leaking packaging will dehydrate the products and lead to loss of beneficial vitamins.
•Keep the surface of the packaging dry: this keeps the packs from freezing together.
•Mark packages with the kind of food contained and the date of storage.
•Food needs to be frozen quickly, so it is best to freeze small portions whenever possible and to make sure that they are as cold as possible before storage. The recommended maximum weight for each portion is 2.5 kg.
•Keep food which is fresh away from food which is already frozen, if you need to freeze fresh food every day, make sure that it is in small portions to prevent this.
•Do not exceed the maximum load for freezing, which is given as 9 kg /
•Write the expiry date and food names on the outside of the packaging so you can be assured of the food type and when it is safe to eat.
•Take food from the freezer to defrost when needed. Defrosted food cannot be refrozen unless it is cooked.
•Do not put too much fresh food into the freezer at once. This could go beyond the freezer’s cooling capacity (see ‘Technical Data’).
•When storing commercially frozen foods, please follow these guidelines:
•Always follow manufacturers’ guidelines for the length of time you should store food for. Do not exceed these guidelines!
•Try to keep the length of time between purchase and storage as short as possible to preserve food quality.
•Buy frozen foods, which have been stored at a temperature of
•Avoid buying food which has ice or frost on the packaging. This indicates that the products might have been partially defrosted and refrozen at some point: temperature rises affect the quality of food.
•Should there be a power cut or the freezer fails for any length of time, you may need to remove food from the freezer and store in a cold, hygienic place (i.e. garage or outhouse area) until the power is restored or the appliance is repaired.
To prevent undue temperature rises, you should wrap the foods in layers of insulating material, such as newspaper, to help to maintain their temperature. It is also important that any food affected by this situation should be either consumed or cooked and refrozen (where suitable) soon afterwards in order to prevent health risks.
Layers of newspaper can also be used to help keep foods cold while you are defrosting the freezer (see ‘Cleaning and Maintenance’).
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