What are the shelf life of ready frozen food?

Since many housewives resort to freezing ready meals and individual products in order to save time, it is quite obvious that questions arise about how long certain items can be stored in the freezer. And the truth is frozen prepared food — it is convenient and economical, especially when it is necessary to serve dishes to the table quickly. As you know, many ready-made dishes can be frozen without any problems, it is enough to consider all the subtleties of the process. If you have a microwave oven, you can cook food in a few minutes. Thanks to its advantages, ready-made frozen food is used more and more nowadays.

As for storage terms, everything is very individual in the context of each individual dish or product. Therefore, it is worth considering in detail the time frames for storing the most common of them.

Shelf life of products and dishes

Let's note in advance that when buying ready-made frozen food, you can store it in the original packaging. If you want to buy, cook and freeze specific dishes yourself, then it is important for you to consider the following:

• it is necessary to buy products with an acceptable expiration date and long before the expiration date;
• it is necessary to follow all instructions and prescriptions indicated on the label of a particular product;
• meat and poultry must be stored in containers without air penetration.

So, let's move on to a detailed review of the shelf life of dishes and specific products. Let's start with liquids, namely soups, cream soups, smoothies, which were prepared and frozen according to all the rules

If we are talking about meat, meat semi-finished products, and dishes containing meat, the time frames for storage will change. The average storage of meat dishes in the freezer is 3 months, but it is very important to take into account the peculiarities of each individual dish or product:

Regarding poultry: there are certain differences in terms of storage for different species and specific dishes. This affects both raw and already prepared items:

Fish and seafood obviously have their own characteristics, which is what determines their storage time in the freezer:

Using ready-made frozen dishes in the kitchen, you must be sure of their quality and suitability for use. For this, it is necessary to select products very carefully during the purchase process, and to carefully follow all the rules of preparation and freezing in the future. To preserve the appearance, taste, useful properties, etc., try to freeze products/dishes as quickly as possible. Ideally, shock freezing should be used, but since this technology is used only in factories, try to equip your refrigerator with a fast freezing shelf, or buy one that has it, if you intend to continue cooking and freezing dishes in advance.

Be responsible for the freezing process and carefully choose the container. The best option for freezing are special air-tight containers and vacuum bags, depending on what you are freezing.

Monitor the temperature regime in the freezer: to maintain products and dishes in their proper form, the temperature in the freezer must be at least -18ºС. With this indicator, all positions will be stored as long as they are characteristic. Arrange dishes and products in one row, when they reach full freezing, they can be stacked more conveniently.

Since frozen ready-made food allows you to ask as you want, while saving time for preparation, it is obvious why it is gaining popularity so rapidly and appears more and more often in the arsenal of housewives in the kitchen. Frozen dishes are very convenient, we recommend trying them. And in order for them to be stored for as long as they are allotted, and to always be at hand, just follow the rules of freezing and storage.

Ask usefully and economically!