solving my freezer overwhelm crisis

the world is being a little extra right now, so it’s good to know that this is at the top of the list of things that i can control.

IT’S FREEZER SEASON, Y’ALL.

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This is going to sound excessive, but we have 3 freezers, and I cannot stress this enough, they are all necessary for our household. As a passionate home cook (and budding food writer, I guess), I am constantly making food and need the storage space so that nothing goes to waste. There’s the kitchen freezer, the 5.5 cubic foot deep freezer, and the quintessential Midwestern mom and dad fridge/freezer in the basement. And I’m really the only one who knows vaguely where everything is, but even I reach a point where I start to lose track.

Recently, I had an experience where I was making some recipe or another and went down to our basement to put the extras in the freezer and found that there was absolutely no room. I needed to freeze the food that I just made, so I resolved to pull out the rest of my summer tomato stash and make tomato sauce. It was this weird moment for me, being forced into cooking. A good problem to have, I suppose.

Realizing that my freezers were on the verge of overflowing, I had to face the fact that it was time for a FREEZER INVENTORY.

Of course, some things are constantly in and out of my freezer. Like I’ve written before, you can always find a chicken carcass (or 7…) in my freezer, which means that they’ll eventually get used to make broth, which is also constantly in my freezer. From spring and summer, I hang onto a minimum of 8 jars of pesto for us to use throughout the winter — I think I’ve used 2 or 3 this winter already. But then there are the things that accumulate and didn’t get used from previous seasons

It’s a dance, one that has its rhythm synced up with the seasons, and the winter season is perfect timing for a freezer inventory / purge. Using the freezer stash is an exciting time: you get to do a little less grocery shopping, it brings back good memories of spring + summer bounties, and it has you looking forward to having all these things fresh when they come around again in a few months.

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Let’s take a little look-see in our freezers!

in case you can’t read my handwriting:

KITCHEN FREEZER

• pizza sauce (8oz)

• 1 ½ pounds beef liver

• 2 pounds chicken livers

• salted butter

• 3 blocks cooked millet (who could forget about the millet)

• 4 blocks lemon juice

• 10 cardamom buns

• emergency mini popsicles (for sore toddler throats)

• 2 waffles (clearly, this needs to be restocked)

• smoothies (strawberry, blueberry, and green)

• 14 granola balls

• 8-9 cubes green garlic purée

• 8 blocks tomato sauce

• broccoli stems

• chopped zucchini

• cubed butternut squash

• dark green ends of leeks

• kale + collard ribs / stems

• chicken carcass (3)

• veggie scrap bags (2)

• bread crumbs (large / coarse)

• 3 blocks braised green sauce

• 3 everything bagels

• various dumplings

• 1 ½ discs pie dough

• 3 ½ pounds beef bones

MIDWESTERN MOM + DAD BASEMENT FREEZER

• chicken broth

• more tomato sauce

• unsalted butter

• lard (for pie dough)

• pestos:

  • arugula/ fennel frond / basil / parsley

  • beet green / arugula / fennel frond / basil

  • fennel frond / carrot top / basil

  • beet green / carrot top / parsley (2)

  • fennel frond / basil

  • arugula / fennel frond

DEEP FREEZER

• RRP (roasted red pepper) hummus

• coffee ice cubes

• veggie scraps

• strawberries

• rhubarb

• blueberries

• raspberries

• poppy almond bundt cake

• ice cube greens

• pizza sauce (8oz)

• roasted strawberries

• 4 blocks tomato sauce

• diced peppers / onions / garlic

• whole chicken

• pizza

• spanakopita

• BANANAS. so many bananas.

• chicken carcass (4)

• edamame (in-shell)

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Now where to start?

I grouped the items into 2 categories: “ready-to-go items” and “ingredients / components”. Ready-to-go items are things that only need thawing or minimal preparation to be consumed. I immediately pulled out the roasted red pepper hummus (aka RRP hummus) because I definitely forgot about it. It wasn’t terribly old, just from the end of 2024, but our fridge is currently at a point where it needs a little help through supplementation. Freezing individual ingredients when they were in-season, squirreling them away for later, is a favorite pastime of mine. Making big batches of things is another — you make a shit ton of a recipe, freeze it, and forget about it. Practicality at its finest… until you run out of room… And this is why having random, semi-forgotten things stored away in your freezer is one of the easiest and most helpful strategies for keeping yourself fed well. Joy quickly overtakes any worry or negative energies you previously had aimed at your kitchen. As my MIL has been known to say: “Isn’t it great? It’s like finding buried treasure.”

in case you can’t read my handwriting, the colored pen version

READY-TO-GO

• cooked millet

• cardamom buns

• waffles

• smoothies

• granola balls

• chicken broth materials (carcasses, veggie scraps)

• bagels

• dumplings

• in-shell edamame

• poppy almond bundt cake

• RRP hummus

• emergency mini popsicles

• coffee ice cubes (from leftover coffee, for iced coffee in the summer)

• pizza

• spanakopita

• chicken broth

INGREDIENTS / COMPONENTS

• lemon juice

• green garlic purée

• tomato sauce

• broccoli stems

• chopped zucchini

• cubed butternut squash

• dark green ends of leeks

• kale + collard ribs / stems

• breadcrumbs (large / coarse)

• braised green sauce

• pie dough

• beef bones

• beef liver

• chicken livers

• pizza sauce

• salted butter

• unsalted butter

• lard

• pestos

• strawberries

• rhubarb

• blueberries

• raspberries

• roasted strawberries

• ice cube greens

• diced peppers / onions / garlic

• BANANAS

• whole chicken

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And then what?

Since I’m a bit of a planner, this is my favorite part: PLANNING.

I couldn’t help but notice that I had a lot of chicken carcasses… the first obvious choice is to carve out at least 2 days in the calendar to make chicken broth. But I’ve got other soup bones, so bone broth is up next.

Then, I’ve got all these random vegetables and other vegetable scraps that aren’t meant for broth but I hate to throw them away (I’m looking at you kale + collard ribs / stems), so my first thought is to make a random green vegetable soup. Add potatoes and other basic flavor bombs, blend it up, baby you’ve got a stew goin’. Same thing applies to hiding vegetables in a big batch of ragu.

I hang on to frozen fruits like my life depends on it. But in reality, I just have a 3-year-old. My little fruit bat. 🦇 I have to get over my bad habit of dumping bananas in the freezer after they’ve gone just a little too ripe. It’s time for smoothies and banana bread. Or banana “ice cream”! (I did this a long time ago, before he was born, and it was delightful — I think it’s just like bananas, vanilla extract, and whatever main flavor you’d like and you blend it in a food processor. We did matcha, but you could easily do it with cocoa powder, peanut butter, or both…) Compotes are also easy to put together on the stovetop, and we can mix those roasted strawberries with yogurt to freeze in popsicle molds. Finally, I’m really looking forward to making this rhubarb breakfast cake from the fantastic blog View From Great Island.

The frozen meats get used regularly in the items listed, but it’s always good to spell everything out when doing a freezer inventory / meal planning session. I can’t seem to stop roasting chickens, probably because IT’S SO EASY, YOU GUYS. And meatballs (with beef liver) and the chicken liver tacos are always favorites in this house.

Finally, I looked for the items that were still listed on the inventory that hadn’t been assigned a recipe and quickly came up with some ideas for how to use them. I’ll be putting this Freezer Planning visual on our fridge and cross things off as I use them.

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A mid-winter freezer inventory is something that I recommend for everyone, no matter how full your freezer is. I hope that this issue has brought some inspiration to either work on emptying out or fill your freezer up when the time comes. And then do it all again the next year.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here.

❤️ Sarah