Having two freezers has made my life so much easier, and managing them has saved me money. One is the bottom half of a fridge freezer that has 3 drawers. The other is a small chest freezer. There are only two of us live in my house and so people question why I need two freezers. The answer is that I use my freezers to save money on food, even when you take into account the energy used to run the extra freezer. Having both freezers means that I have the space to take advantage of buying meat and other items when discounted, or cost less due to being in season. I can also freeze a lot of what I harvest from my garden. It is good practice to harvest almost daily as plants produce more that way, and so I start a bag for each vegetable and fruit, and add to them as I pick each morning. This means that we can eat things like raspberries at Christmas, and we always have access to vegetables and fruit whether I have money or not.
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Another thing that I use my extra freezer for is to store foraged fruit, especially blackberries. I make bramble compote at least 4 times a month, as well as pies and crumbles during the winter. This free food improves my nutrition, and is a source of joy during the cold, bad weather. We only use our oven a couple of times a month and fill it to the brim in order to save energy. I can then fill the freezer with bread, cakes, and pastries to last us until the next time I bake. If we don’t use them all it doesn’t matter as it gives us more choice and we are not eating the same thing all month. Making stock is easier as I can freeze vegetable peelings until I have enough to make a pan full. I can also freeze left overs to make meals another time, or make meals to freeze for when I know that I will be too busy to cook. When ever we go to the community fridge, we are given things that are going out of date, like bread, vegetables, or fruit. Having room to freeze them prevents waste and helps stretch my low food budget.
It would be difficult to live without my freezers, though I have been exploring canning, fermenting and dehydrating more over the last couple of years. In the chest freezer I store things in the large bags for life from Aldi. Different ingredients have different coloured bags. Red is meat and fish, green is vegetables, yellow is baked good, blue is fruit, and a turquoise one has left overs and meals in. The bags are easy to lift out and keep every thing together so that things do not get lost at the bottom of the freezer. Now that I am getting older, it also helps my back as I can put the bag on a table and go through it. In the other freezer I also keep meat in one drawer, vegetables in another, and fruit in another. The things in the drawers are used up first, and then replenished from the chest freezer so that every thing is rotated.
I have a freezer inventory, but I would be lying if I said that it was always up to date, as, especially with left overs, I will just pop them in when I am washing up and forget to add them to my written folder. It does help me have a general idea of what I have, though, especially as regards meat and fish. Having an inventory also means that I do not overspend and buy things that I already have lots of. I do tend to run out of things sometimes, eg we went 2 months without any chicken, but I try to only buy meat when they are either a good price, or I can afford them from a good butcher or farm shop. I rarely buy yellow sticker meat any more. It has to be used as soon as it defrosts, and I am staying away from the supermarkets as much as possible.
People tell me that doing a pantry challenge is a waste of time as it will mean that I will end up with empty cupboards and freezers. It is true that I do run down some of my stock. It is a good way to use up things that have been hanging around at the back of the cupboard, or the bottom of the freezer. Everything is rotated then and does not go out of date. However, my freezer and cupboards never empty. You might ask, “How?”. The main thing that I do is that every time that I use any ingredients, I make something to put back in return. That way there is always something to eat, and we never go hungry, or feel deprived, or anxious about food.
It is about forward planning. I don’t just feed us that day. I plan what else that I can make for another day also with the ingredients. Some examples this month are that I took a tin of tuna from my cupboard, some potatoes from my box, and some herbs from my garden. I made fish cakes, we ate 2, and put 4 in the freezer (2 meals for 2 of us). Another example is that I took 6oz of pulled turkey out of the freezer. I used some fridge gravel and vegetables that had seen better days, and made a slow cooker turkey stew. We ate it for 2 meals that week, and froze a portion to use for 2 more meals in the future (I would make the 1 portion in to pasties and mix with a bit of potato). Some of the turkey stew that we made that week was made into a pie. I made some pastry using some of my staple foods. From this I made the pie, a quiche, some lime curd tarts, and some mince pies. More than half of these baked good went into the freezer. There was also some pastry left which went into the freezer to be used another time when using the slow cooker to bake.
The freezer stayed full and I added meals to use another time. I also added meals to my fridge like the quiche, and baked items to my tins to last us all week. Very little was used from my cupboards, and I only used vegetables that were past it, besides the potatoes. Those were the last that I had grown last year and had finished growing in my greenhouse in tubs. The turkey was what I had picked clean from the carcass at Christmas. I tend to use fresh produce until it starts running out in February or March, and then we live on mainly the frozen produce. It probably has more nutrients in it as most of my home grown vegetables are frozen within minutes of harvesting them.
The reason that I like to run the freezer down a bit sometimes is so that I can replenish it with foraged food, or food grown in the garden. I also like to run it down a bit before November as meat is cheaper that month as it is discounted for Christmas (often half price). In all the supermarkets in the UK, joints are sold at half price. I buy 4 or 5 and we make mince and sausages from them that will last us at least 6 months for a cost of about £60. I also make room to fill the freezer with home made treats for Christmas so that I can empty it in time to fit in any discounted items on sale once Christmas has finished. These often include cream, turkey, nuts and cheese.
I tend to do a couple of months of pantry challenge between January and March so that I have room for any Easter discounted products. I am quite strict with money on this pantry challenge so that I can save the money to buy these items. I give myself £3 a week. I also do a pantry challenge for a couple of months in July and August as we have a lot in the garden. I will still buy staples during this time and so often spend between £5 and £7 a week during these 8 weeks. This isn’t set in stone and if I can spend less I will. At the same time, if I see a good offer on something that will save us money in the end, I will buy it. If I gave myself a set weekly food budget I would spend it. Having a low annual food budget gives me more flexibility and makes me be more careful as I want to have money left for Christmas bargains at the end of the year. October is another month that I tend to try to spend nothing, or as little as possible. We often are preserving at this time, have abundant harvests from foraging and the garden, and need to make sure that we have room in the freezer for November.
Do you do similar with your freezers? How do you use them to save money?
Learn how to use your freezer to save hundreds of dollars per year including buying in bulk, stocking up on sale and preserving in season produce with these five tips that are sure to help you keep your grocery budget in check.
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I use my deep freezer on a daily basis as a meal prep and money-saving workhorse. It’s one of my absolute favorite kitchen tools that helps me to get affordable, healthy meals on the table day in and day out. We are a homeschooling family who lives rurally, which means that the lion’s share of our meals are eaten at home and I try to make as many of those from scratch as possible.
Having an extra deep freezer in the house is invaluable to me. Yes, it costs a certain amount in electricity each month to keep it running, but the savings and convenience that I can get from it far outweighs the cost. In fact, we’re probably going to get a second deep freezer sometime in the next few months.
If you’re unsure as to why a deep freezer would be worth the space and investment, then stick around for five ways that this amazing appliance can transform your kitchen.
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A great way that you can use your freezer to save money is to buy in bulk. Prices are normally cheaper per ounce or per pound when purchased in bulk, so when you use your freezer to buy in bulk, you are saving your family money.
Being able to stock up when something is one sale or at it’s rock bottom price is an awesome way to save money and also fill your freezer on a budget.
Around the holidays, things like chocolate chips, butter, flour and other baking supplies are on sale. I try to stock up on these items (and store them in my freezer) to get me through until Easter when they go on sale again.
Butter is an especially good item to stock up on when it’s on sale in November/December because it’s normally at it’s rock bottom price and it freezes beautifully. For more information, check out my post 24 Grocery Items to Stockpile During Holiday Sales.
Also, if you find a great deal on produce that freezes well such as bell peppers, cabbage, celery, onions, blueberries or green onions, then you can really save a lot of money. Not all produce freezes well and some need to be blanched before freezing, so make sure that you do your research before stocking up.
Meat is also a great thing to stock up on when it goes on sale. Pretty much any cut of any meat will freeze well. Some of the cuts that I buy when they’re on sale to put in the freezer are chicken thighs, chicken legs, ground beef, ground sausage, sausage links or patties, whole hams (at Easter), pepperoni and meatballs.
We grow a large garden, so being able to freeze produce while it’s in season is a massive savings to us. Berries are in season during the summer and freeze extremely well. They are great to bake with or use in smoothies. I also love to make freezer jam with them.
I use fresh, in season apples to make freezer apple pie filling, apple butter and apple sauce. I also use my freezer every summer to preserve tomato sauce, pumpkin puree and shredded zucchini for muffins.
You don’t have to have a garden to take advantage of in season produce. Check your local farmer’s market or grocery store shelves to see what deals you can find. We aren’t very great at growing corn, so this year we bought it from a local roadside stand and canned it. There’s no rule that says you have to grow it yourself in order to preserve it.
I absolutely adore freezer cooking, but you don’t have to make 20+ meals all at once to do it. Doing something simple such as browning several pounds of ground beef, making a big pot of bone broth to freeze or cooking a pot of beans and freezing them is also a form of freezer cooking. You can also freeze things like pancakes, muffins and loaves of bread to help save money on breakfasts and snacks.
This meal prep type freezer cooking is what I do 99% of the time. Any prep work that you can do ahead of time will make your life so much easier and also save you money.
But if you want to get into keeping full meals in the freezer, the easiest way that I’ve found to do so, is to simply double your dinner recipe once or twice per week and pop the extra one of them into the freezer for later. I’ve found that casseroles, soups and slow cooker meals freeze the best.
A failure to plan is a plan to fail. Even the most organized of moms will have things go wrong every once in a while and that’s why it’s smart to use your freezer as a back up plan.
Keeping convenience food in your freezer is a great way to save yourself the time and money of going through the drive-thru. If you know that you have a frozen pizza in the freezer and that dinner can be on the table in 20 minutes with no prep from you, then you can save yourself all kinds of money.
Everyone needs a fall back and the freezer is a great tool for this purpose that can save you hundreds of dollars over the course of a year.
Do you do any freezer cooking? What is your favorite way to save money using the freezer? I’d love to know!