I recently got my hands on a very old but still totally serviceable full-sized deli slicer, and my local restaurant depot is very liberal about handing out day passes to anyone who walks in and asks for one, and the savings buying a whole log of meat and slicing it yourself are pretty bonkers, totally worth the pain in the ass that is breaking it down to clean when I’m done.
Of course it’s just the wife and I, and 6lbs of Pastrami is a lot for us to go through before it goes bad. So far I’ve mostly been getting a few friends to chip in and divying up stuff between us or doing a little bartering and trading lunch meat for homemade bread and such, but I’d like to start freezing some to have on-hand.
Anyone have any experience with this to share? I have a vacuum sealer and a deep freezer to work with.
Which meats freeze well, which don’t? Is it worth trying to slice it then package and freeze it in smaller portions, or should I freezer larger chunks of meat then thaw and slice it as-needed? Should I just abandon the idea of freezing and stick with the little ad hoc food co-op thing I have going?
Of particular interest to me is homemade roast beef and turkey, I’m never going back to the deli counter for those after I’ve been making my own (those boneless turkey roasts are amazing for this purpose, even if I’m sure there’s a little meat glue involved in them)
Also cheese, I’ve never really contemplated freezing cheese until I found myself with a 9lb block of Swiss in my fridge. My gut says cheese doesn’t do well in the freezer, but my gut has been wrong before.
I also kind of like the idea of having pretty much a lifetime supply of prosciutto in my freezer, although a quick Google search seems to tell me that prosciutto does not freeze well at all, which seems odd to me, since it’s pretty low-moisture I would have thought it would freeze spectacularly well.
Besides that, anyone have any other cool ideas about what I can do with a slicer? I’ve already sliced down some beef to make cheesesteaks, and when I get my smoker up and running when the weather gets nicer I’m going to have a go at making my own bacon, and will probably use it to slice down beef for jerky as well.
To address the cheese, cheese does very well in the freezer. It’s difficult to even tell the difference after it’s thawed.
That absolutely applies to harder cheeses. Cheddar, provolone, parmesan all freeze and defrost with no issues. Cream cheese changes the texture and will not be that good anymore. Brie and camembert get a bit funny too.
Everything freezes fine, just a matter of how it’s packaged and how long it’s frozen. Only thing you’re sacrificing is quality of texture and flavor over long extended periods—if frozen properly, food is safe to eat indefinitely (whether previously frozen and then thawed food is enjoyable to eat is another story).
Freeze the meats in small quantities that are easily consumable within a couple of days. Absolutely do not freeze and then thaw and refreeze larger chunks of anything—if something previously frozen is thawed and is past its sell-by date, it’s usually safe to eat for only a day or so.
Also if you’re running into the issue of having too much bulk meat—stop acquiring more bulk meat. Influencers love to sell the idea of DIY bulk food prep but most of the time that doesn’t make sense for people, for a multitude of reasons.
Yeah, when I talk about freezing chunks of meet to thaw and slice later, I’d be cutting into 1-2lb chunks to slice as needed, not trying to thaw and refreeze a whole 5+lb log of meat.
And it’s really the quality I’m worried about, I understand it from a food safety standpoint, I’m just trying to figure out the best ways to freeze which things, don’t want to take a pack of meat out of the freezer and have it be tasteless mush or dried out or whatever.
Also the savings doing this are pretty nuts, in some cases I’m getting the whole thing for the price of just a couple pounds if I got it from the deli counter. I think I got a 6lb pastrami for about the price of what maybe 2lbs at the grocery store would have cost me, cheaper per lb than some of the cheaper lunch meats, so sadly even if I end up throwing half of it away (which is what I’m try to and so far successfully avoiding) I’m still saving money.
I cut cheese into little cubes and freeze it, it does pretty well imo
If you already have the cheese on hand, do an experiment. Cut off a piece and freeze it overnight. Next day, defrost it and see how it is. Because the issue you’re concerned about is change to texture or taste after freezing and thawing, you only need to leave it long enough to be fully frozen through - not as long as you normally would for storage.
(You wouldn’t want to buy a bulk size piece of meat/cheese just to experiment, but if you already have some on hand it’s worth trying for yourself to find out if you’ll find the result satisfactory.)
Generally, for freezing anything, the faster you can freeze it, the better. Ice crystals grow as things freeze, and if they grow slow, they grow big, and they disrupt the structure of the food, and make the texture mushy.
Something I frequently freeze is greens like kale. I’ll harvest more than I can eat from my garden, so I freeze it. I basically wash it, then lay it out on cookie sheets in a single layer, and put those in a chest freezer. After I’ve had enough time to wash the next batch, I’ll go down and peel the frozen kale off the cookie sheet and put it into a container of some kind.
