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I'd like to ask folks about their experiences freezing in ice cube trays.

I'm single and live alone. So when it comes to things like sauces, I've a need to freeze. A 16oz jar of pesto sauce is enough for 4 large meals to begin with. And I love Romesco sauce and a double batch takes no more time than a single. So I'm freezing sauces quite a lot, and other things, like lemon juice, which is just nice to always have on hand (and the bottled stuff is skanky) and roasted garlic and so on.

So I have several questions.

1) Some things are really hard to turn out of the silicone trays. Does anyone have any tricks they've learned to make it easier?

2) I've been freezing in the trays, then turning them out and bagging them. Larger portions, like a sauce, such as pesto, I'll bag separating the cubes with strips of parchment. This works, but even squeezing every bit of air you can from the bag, they're a bit bulky in the freezer. Other things like lemon juice or roasted garlic, I freeze and bag, but the small cubes along with opening and closing bags to get at them, they freeze together and are hard to separate. I've begun to wonder if I should just store things in the cube trays. They might take up less space and not suffer freezer burn or difficulty separating. Does anyone have experience doing this?

3) I've seen multiple ways of freezing portions of zest and herbs -- just water, in olive oil. I'd be interested in hearing pros and cons from experiences.

Thanks for any advice!

I freeze all sorts of things these days - I'm certainly not an expert but have had some pretty successful results.  Here are some comments / suggestions that I hope will be useful.  I will admit up front that I do have a lot of freezer space :) 

1.  INDIVIDUAL silicone muffins cups:  these have a 1/3 cup max volume and I use them to freeze small amounts of stock & small "pucks" of soffitto and carmelized onion stored  in freezer bags.  I level  a chopping board in the freezer  and then the cups turn completely inside out and the frozen "stuff" just pops out -nothing I've tried has stuck.  I also bake individual sized egg bakes in them and then remove them for storage in the fridge or freezer.

2.  MASON JARS: my freezer has all sorts of labelled jars ranging from the littlest guys up to the 1 litre size.  I freeze portions of homemade stocks , sauces and soups this way BUT because I cook for 2 and often cut recipes in 1/2, I have started freezing the unused portions from canned goods (ie tomatoes, crushed pineapple, creamed corn etc.).  I also freeze buttermilk in the volumes I typically use as I never seem to be able to use the whole carton.   I've never had trouble with this and my food waste has gone way down - but as I said - I do have a lot of space available.

3. FRESH HERBS:  I put excess parsley or basil in the food processor with some olive oil.  I don't bother with ice cube trays anymore because I put 1 tbsp mounds onto parchment on a cutting board and flash freeze them.   The frozen mounds go into freezer bags - I've never had the problem of the individual mounds freezing together.  Pesto is a bit more liquid but I have those small paper mini muffin sized liners (purchased to create a "treat" tray and there were lots left over) which work well.  Currently I am freezing thyme in my small ice cube trays in a small amount of water.  I did a test cube 1st to be sure it popped out easily and it did.  For rosemary, I am trying a method I saw online which involves packing the fresh leaves into a "cigar" (or log I guess :) in the bottom of a freezer bag and rolling it tightly (I also added elastics) and freezing it - you are supposed to able slice off the amount you need....we'll see. And the tightly rolled bag takes up very little space. For chives I just flash freeze chopped chives (in an individual layer on parchment) and then dump them in a small mason jar - they seem to come out easily.

4.  FLAT BAGS:  I have flat freezer bags with slabs of chipotle in adobo (made from the small can) , roasted garlic, sautéed leeks etc......it is easy to slice off what you need.  I have also learned that fresh chilis are easy to freeze whole in a bag.....I have good success with the super hot little red guys, cayennes, and even jalapeños.  If you want heat but don't need texture it is easy to mince them and put back any portion you don't use.  

I am sure lots of members have even better tips but hopefully this helps with some ideas. 

Thank you for sharing.

The individual silicone muffin tin liners hadn't occurred to me. It sounds like a good idea.

I'm PERSONALLY done with Mason Jars for freezing... It turns out that even with a science and engineering background, I'm pathetic at estimating freezing expansion. I lost 2 quarts of Thai Tom Ghai soup and a quart of pasta sauce, along with 3 broken mason jars and a messy freezer cleaning, to my failure to estimate freezing expansion and jar breakage.

Flat bags -- I love the idea. I watched an episode of the BBC series Nadia Hussain - Time to Eat, where she showed freezing in bags. I was in awe! Her freezer looked like a file system! But I've had less luck. I've frozen cauliflower rice like this, and very difficult ot get the contents back out of the bag. Maybe better with other things.

Fresh Herbs -- thanks for all the good advice. One size fits all doesn't surprirse me. I will try different things. I bought fresh Rosemary today, simply because they had the "soft" type. I'll try preserving it.

I have certainly heard stories re: the mason jar explosions.....I cracked one jar but no mess as the stock was basically frozen when it cracked....I am very generous with the "head space" requirement since then.

Re getting things out of the bags.......have you tried freezing the cauliflower rice spread out on parchment BEFORE putting it in the bag for storage?   I have great luck with this technique (I think it is sometimes called flash freezing) for all kinds of things.  I've never really had a problem getting anything out of the bags - even the individual 'blobs" of things (including tomato paste and pesto) come out out easily and "unattached".  Also what I call "flat slabs" come out so I can slice off what I need then return & individual items like berries or peppers stay separate.  

I typically flash freeze on a level cutting board with parchment (which can typically be re-used) or in those individual muffin cups - a stocking stuffer that gets used ALL the time :)

I also have some great screw top ziplock containers ( approx 1 cup & 3 cup sizes) that stack easily to save some space that I use a lot - but with many differing opinions on their use, I often hesitate to recommend them.

Good luck with everything and please share any new ideas/useful tips you come acroos as you experiment!

I am experimenting with using muffin tins to freeze things, then take the resulting pucks and stick them in some stackable Tupperware. So far I've only done rice - and have had to dig the pucks out a bit using a knife, but they came out pretty well. Next time I'll use parchment paper underneath and hope they come out more easily. I intend to try beans and chopped or shredded chicken next. I live alone, and am drawn to the idea of assembling quick meals by taking frozen pucks of pre-cooked foods and throwing them together, as well as portioning out leftovers so I don't have big containers to deal with.

Reading the above post, I might just have to get a bunch of silicon muffin cups!

Some great tips on this thread. Just wanted to add I freeze most things using silicone baby food freezer trays because the portions are larger than ice cube trays and it's easier to get them out afterwards.

I have been avoiding using silicone cups for fear of soapy fragrance and taste even with 100% silicone.  Have you noticed any of this being used for freezing only?  If ok, I like to get some for freezing only.  

I have never noticed any odour/soap residue but since everything I use them for is savory and seriously pops out very cleanly, I never put these guys in the dishwasher.  I hand wash them with very hot water and a small amount of dish soap.  And just to be sure before I responded - I just gave them all a good sniff and actually licked a couple to confirm - nothing :)  Of course, now I'm handwashing the ones I "tasted" in lots of hot water and a small amount of dish soap again :)

I haven't had the silicone molds taint the contents, but I have had the opposite happen. When used for jumbo ice cubes I've had them get a persistant freezer burn smell. And when used to freeze roasted garlic... well, you can imagine.

In both cases simple washing didn't do the trick. I ended up soaking in an baking soda bath.

I'm curious, is there a reason you use a cutting board as opposed to a sheet pan? I would think that a cutting board would be fairly insulating and slow the freezing. Is there an advantage to that?

I have many smaller cutting boards and so I can typically fit them onto various freezer shelves more easily :) 
That is the only reason!

I am pleased to say that my experiments freezing pinto beans and bolognese sauce are a great success. Silicone muffin cups are definitely the way to go - they peel right off!

Really happy it worked for you.......those bags look like MY freezer :)

I think I'm a bit late to this party

I have tried freezing both bought and home made pesto in ice cube trays, but have found that the oil and salt stops it freezing in solid blocks, and if I try putting the slightly mushy cubes in a bag I end up with a mess  Do other people not find this?

when I stripped my basil plants I froze the resulting pesto in those little tubs sold for baby food

i do reduce home made stocks and make my own frozen "stock cubes" :)

I successfully did it. My pesto was the Costco's Kirkland brand, not homemade. I used jumbo cube trays designed for making ice cubes for craft cocktails. Each slot holds about 3.5 ounces. Getting them out of the tray WAS a little messy, with some surface melting as I removed them, but they generally held their block shapes. I think I probably left them for a day -- next time I'll give it 2 or 3 days and hope they are more solid. Having had a bad experience with pucks of puréed roasted garlic freezing together, I zig-zagged strips of parchment between the blocks before bagging them for the freezer.

Perhaps you should try freezing for a longer period of time before removing them from the trays. Given enough time, EVO will solidify into a solid mass of 'sludge' in the fridge, so it should freeze. I checked what I have in the freezer now, and the blocks are firm, but not rock hard. I could deform them with a firm squeeze.

If you are making your own Pesto, you might have too much salt in it. I included some cooking classes on a trip to Tuscany a few years ago. Both Parmesan and Romano are very salty. We were taught that the added salt while grinding the basil, pine nuts and garlic (if using), is to coax the essential oils from the basil -- you only need a pinch.

Thanks

I don't add much if any salt to home made pesto, apart from the cheese which is, as you say pretty salty, the ingredients are simply pine nuts, basil, garlic, cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano), and EVOO.

I'm in the UK and I doubt we get Kirkland pesto, but I have several times tried freezing Sacla pesto Genovese and found that if left long enough - say 24 hours - the cubes are firm enough to unmould quite easily, but still soft enough to merge together when bagged up

This topic has been great for me. I usually don't do anything with my end-of-season herbs beyond making pesto with the basil and freezing in ice cube trays. BTW, my understanding was that you shouldn't add the parm when freezing and add it after defrosting - maybe because it doesn't freeze firm when the cheese is there? Oh the other thing I did last year was make herb salt (I used the recipe from Shaya) which I keep in the freezer and use on omelettes, roasted veg, etc.

Thanks to averythingcooks' tips I have this year frozen masses of snipped chives, thyme leaves and I'm about to make sage butter and freeze it and also freeze the leaves. Sometimes it just takes a nudge like this to get you doing things you should have been doing for years!

As I try to save the herbs still growing on my increasingly "chilly" front deck, Jane's tip about the herb salt came at the perfect time!  I checked out the recipe link & I will be making some later today using thyme, rosemary and parsley.  I'm really pleased to see that it can be kept in the freezer. 

Thinking about it, I have heard that, but if you are freezing bought pesto, the cheese is in it by default, though I usually find I want to add extra, and it just seemed easier to make the recipe as written, use some fresh, and freeze some.