There's a french chain, picard, which sells gourmet frozen food , for the french. And they really like it – so it must be really tasty. But it's expensive.
On the other hand ,some families , that want to save time and money, cook food in large batches and freeze it for the whole week.
Assuming those families know how to cook great food(say they are the top 20% of home cooks), what are the missing pieces/technologies for them to make really high quality, gourmet FROZEN food ?
Is it only flash freeze tech ? or something more ?
Best Answer
Flash-freezing equipment wouldn't hurt, but for the normal home cook, the main things are to chill it as quickly as reasonably possible, package it with as much air removed as possible (vacuum sealers help here) in individual meal-sized portions, then freeze.
Thaw in the fridge if possible, or by heating your vacuum-sealed bag in a water bath. (Microwaves are pretty bad at heating frozen blocks of food and even with a lot of attention paid will tend to overheat part while other parts remain frozen.)
Choose recipes that work for the equipment you have, and adapt your weeknight process to combine the frozen ingredients with fresh ones.
Soups, many sauces, chilis, beans and rice dishes freeze well under normal home conditions, as do some meat preparations (the texture can change, and usually, the larger the cut of meat, the more likely it is that the change from freezing will be negative). Without flash-freezing, foods with a high water content tend to become mushy, so that the broccoli you steamed to perfection will most likely thaw out to be limp and potatoes may be mushy.