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What do you freeze in cubes?

 
Jennie Little
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The interesting thread about making veggie stock as a part of the kitchen flow got me thinking. I freeze salsa in cubes. I really, really love the taste of raw tomatillos and will eat, but don’t like near as much cooked tomatillos. So when tomatillos are rampant, I make batches of raw salsa verde and freeze it as cubes. I also freeze salsa roja from the market.  I got tired of it getting fuzzy in the fridge.

I don’t know of someone else who freezes salsa this way, but it works for us.

What, if anything, do you freeze as cubes? Why?

Btw, my ice cube trays are actually silicon chocolate mounds.. They were cheap at the local discount box lot store and are the only silicon things in my kitchen!

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Skandi Rogers
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Eggs. three cubes = one egg. I freeze lots of things in small portions but larger than icecubes, like spinach, garlic butter etc.
 
Gregory Campbell
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Besides pesto we also make pepper cubes. Mostly peppers but also will include some tomatoes, garlic, onions and lots of herbs.
 
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Prickly pear pulp.  I freeze them in largish cubes, then thaw and refreeze into single portion sized bug-shapes and float them on portions of yogurt until they're thawed enough to stir in.

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Mike Haasl
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I freeze water in cubes sometimes.  We use ice packs more than ice though.

We also do basil pesto in ice cubes.  I froze minced garlic and avocado oil in a pint mason jar last spring but next time I'll probably use ice cube trays since it was too hard to chip out of the jar.

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Rita Bliden
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We freeze leftover coffee, and tomato paste. We sometimes buy the paste in a tube, but it's much less expensive in the can.  I like the pesto idea, as well as the salsa.

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Jennie Little
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I used to freeze tomato paste in the can, cut both sides off, use one as a pusher, freeze in a plastic ziplock.  I got where I can only eat only nonred tomatoes in quantity and stopped freezing the leftover can, as it wasn’t being used. These days, I use Italian tomato paste in a tube. It’s a seasoning here now, a tube lasts a couple of years!

I have made freezer tomato paste before, but hadn’t thought of freezing it in cubes. I may make some nonred tomato paste this summer now. Thanks!

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Charli Wilson
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We do olive oil with garlic or chilli (or both)- makes it easy to add to the pan at the start of making a meal.
 
Leigh Tate
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I freeze mostly eggs in ice cube trays. I also freeze them in muffin tins, since I'm likely to need two or more eggs at a time.

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Caleb Mayfield
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I make clarified butter in large batches and freeze in ice cube trays.
One cube is exactly the right amount to make a batch of popcorn in a pan for me. I have 4 trays and some silicone soap molds that work great. I freeze the tray first and let the clarified butter cool a bit before filling the trays, the straight into the freezer. Once solid they go into a storage container in the freezer for easy access when I want to make popcorn.

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Tj Jefferson
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Chimichurri sauce and what we call "green sauce" which is a parsley base. Probably will not do mint as it grows darn near 12 months around here but a good option for anything with volatile oils in a base of olive oil or some other oil. Easy meals, just meat with a cube dropped on it to melt- great with game meats like venison that need oil and complimentary heavy herb seasoning.

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Tj Jefferson
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BTW for storing eggs they seemed to do well in a tub of hydrated lime. supposed to last years but we ate them way sooner so I cant say. None of them hatched!

Thats one less thing in the freezer- I kept them in the garage,

Standing on the shoulders of giants. Giants with dirt under their nails

 
Mart Hale
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I make tea concentrate with lemon grass / apple mint.     I toss in blender, blend at high concentration, then put in plastic bottles and freeze.     When ready I put on in fridge let thaw, then poor about 3 table spoons in a glass mix with hot or cold water to taste.

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Huck Johnson
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pesto
 
Pete Podurgiel
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Strawberries ....especially useful for salvaging bruised ones before they go bad.
Just throw them in a blender & freeze. Great for making frozen drinks or thaw them for a topping on yogurt

Parsley also works well in cubes. Simply mince, place in trays, then cover with water & freeze.

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Jill Winger
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I like to do the olive oil/fresh herb trick for salvaging some of the herb garden before a frost.

Also I use cube trays for fresh lemon/lime juice if I find a good deal on citrus.
 
Kenneth Elwell
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Pesto, tomato paste, garlic and ginger, dipping sauces. These things often are made/sold in amounts too large to get used all at once. Portioning in useful sizes is always a plus, making future use easier/more likely (like Caleb does).
I also save up small portions of things, adding to a stash, until I get enough to be useful... Vegetable trimmings and peelings to add to chicken trimmings and bones to eventually make a stock.

My grandfather used to do the same with his harvests. He'd use empty milk cartons and bag strawberries inside... some one day, more another day, then again a week later, until it was full, then he would fold the top of the carton down.
He might take out a small bag to have with ice cream, or the whole carton might go into a pie...

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Tracy Volan
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To help with having fresh(ish) herbs into winter, I like to chop them and freeze them in ice cube trays.  Then store them in airtight containers.  Probably my favorite is mint, for teas.  But it's nice to be abe to grab a cube of parsley, etc. to toss into a pot for soup too.  
 
Jay Angler
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I freeze milk in cubes. I can only have small quantities, but I prefer milk in black teas. Two cubes in a mug and let it sit to thaw and them pour the hot tea in (I always make tea in a tea pot - making it in a mug just isn't right.)

I also freeze lemon or lime juice in cubes - it's generally cheaper to buy a bag and frozen is fine for making humus or other bean dips. Most commercial "lemon juice" has added sulfites which is on my "avoid as much as possible list".

Most other things I freeze, I generally need more of than works in cubes. I have a bunch of ~1/2 cup containers that I use a lot.

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Mandy Launchbury-Rainey
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I remember Deliah Smith recommending left over wine frozen in cubes, to be used later in stocks or sauces. Not a problem we ever have in our house it has to be said.

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Marie Grace
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I freeze small amounts of left-over veggies. Then I can add them to sauces and Hubby gets more vegetables than he thinks.
 
Jay Angler
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Mandy Launchbury-Rainey wrote:

I remember Deliah Smith recommending left over wine frozen in cubes, to be used later in stocks or sauces.

Hmmm... I think I'd want to do that in something with a lid. Alcohol doesn't freeze very well. I tried making some "adult" popsicles one summer as a treat. I may have been using something stronger than a typical wine, but I also had mixed it heavily with fruit and juice, but it turned out more of a slushy than a popsicle. That said, my house does tend to have left-over wine. Visitors sometimes bring wine and it's another thing with sulfites that I need to avoid. A bit added to a sauce would be fine though or a marinade, which I tend to use more than sauces.

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Stacy Witscher
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I have silicon large ice cube trays, each cube is 1/2 cup. I use these to freeze pumpkin puree, parsnip puree, red chile puree and caramelized onions. Four cubes fit in a quart ziploc bag, which get reused with the same product over and over.

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Marco Banks
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Chaya.

Fresh chaya needs to be boiled for 15 minutes in order to remove the cyanide.  For this reason, it's a bit of a pain to work with when I want to throw a handful of chaya into scrambled eggs, for instance.  So by boiling it first, and then chopping it up and freezing in an ice cube tray, it's easy to grab a cube of it, toss into the skillet and make my eggs -- 2 minutes, rather than 15 minutes.

The texture holds up nicely, even after boiling and freezing.  It's still got a nice bite to it -- doesn't turn mushy.

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I chop liver into cubes and freeze it and take a couple every morning like a vitamin. I did not grow up eating liver and was struggling to bring myself to prepare it and eat it. So rather than take powdered vitamin capsules I went the frozen cubed route.

 
Olivia Hall
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I most frequently freeze lemon juice. I usually buy a whole net of organic lemons, but I can never use them up fast enough, so I zest them (freeze that, too) and freeze the juice in ice cube trays. When I have the time, I may measure out a certain number of teaspoons or tablespoons. When I need the juice in a recipe, I just defrost a few cubes in the microwave.

Other things I've frozen: herbs (basil, cilantro), leftover milk or yogurt (for smoothies), tomato paste.

I also have one silicone oversized ice cube form, which I've used to freeze large chunks of homemade broth. I take them out and store them in a ziplock freezer bag.
 
Diane Kistner
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Rita Bliden wrote:We freeze leftover coffee, and tomato paste. We sometimes buy the paste in a tube, but it's much less expensive in the can.  I like the pesto idea, as well as the salsa.



I just had a thought, but I've never tried it. I was watching a YouTube video on how to use a sandwich bag as a piping bag for frosting. I wonder how a can of tomato paste would do just dumped into a bag and then a corner cut off to squeeze it out.
 
denise ra
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Soap nut/berry Laundry Detergent, homemade. One cube for a large load of laundry, and conveniently the freezer is next to the washer. I used regular ice cube tray this time but they don't pop out as easily as ice and the trays AR getting torn up. I need to use something else next time.

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