My favorite magazine – “Cook’s
Illustrated” - is, of course, dedicated to cooking. I really like how the authors write about how
they go about developing a recipe. Besides
giving lots of good cooking tips, they also evaluate equipment and food
products and since they don’t have advertisers or sponsors to answer to, I find
their recommendations to be spot on. They also give lots of good cooking tips.
One of their cooking tips
caught my eye in the recent Sept/Oct 2013 issue (page 31) titled “Freezing
Stew? Read This First” (not a MLA style citation but you've got all the
information!). I like to cook in
quantity and freeze meal size portions for future lunches and dinners. I have frozen plenty of stews so I was surprised by the brief article (which I
shall further condense) that not all cooked vegetables freeze well. The author cooked and then froze a number of
common stew vegetables including the following that I often add to my stews – squash;
carrots; peas; sweet potatoes; and red, Yukon gold, and russet potatoes. They found that the potatoes and squash were
reduced to a watery mush after freezing.
Their advice was to cook the squash and potatoes on the side and add
them in when reheating the stew.
