Melissa Clark's Tip For Freezing Sauces Saves A Ton Of Freezer Space
Is your freezer full of bags and containers and boxes threatening to topple out every time you open the door? If you're risking your toes each time you go in for an ice cream sandwich — or if you're just running out of space and contemplating a chest freezer each time you wander through Costco — it's probably time to level up your freezer Tetris skills. It's time to flat-pack your sauces.
On her show, Rachel Ray spoke with food columnist and cookbook author Melissa Clark and got a great tip for saving space: Freeze the liquid in a quarter sheet pan so it freezes into a small and flat shape, and then transfer it into an airtight bag. This will allow you to stack multiple bags of sauce, soup, broth, or other liquids one atop another, taking up way less space in the freezer.
This method has other advantages, too: With more surface area, the sauce will freeze more quickly, which better maintains the proper temperatures of your freezer. The flat disk of frozen sauce cuts down on air-to-food contact as it sits in the freezer, preventing more egregious freezer burn. And, of course, it also creates a much more stable stacking surface, so you're much less likely to have a icy, rock hard something-or-other topple out and launch at your toes.
How to use a quarter sheet pan to freeze liquids
Make sure you have a flat freezer surface to set the sheet pan as your sauce freezes to avoid sloshing, spilling, and uneven freezing. If you're struggling to get the block out of the pan once frozen, create a hot water bath for it and dip the bottom of the pan in just long enough to loosen up the edges. Make sure you don't melt the whole sheet, or you'll have to start all over again! Make sure to put the flat-packed bag of sauce directly back into the freezer to avoid any misshapen melting incidents.
When you pick up a quarter sheet pan, you're going to notice that it's a bit bigger than the dimensions of your zip-top bag. A quarter sheet pan is 9.5 inches by 13 inches. The standard gallon zip-top bag is a 10.5-inch square. Don't panic. To make the math work, carefully score the frozen liquid with a knife and break it in half. Then, stack the two halves into your zip-top bag, seal, and put in the freezer.
To make this scoring and snapping process a little easier, heat the knife with hot water or over your burner to melt the icy block just a little bit as you score. Go slowly and carefully to avoid slipping, cutting yourself, or shattering your nice, flat, uniform sheet of sauce into jagged pieces that pack up worse than you started.
Is it worth the (little bit of) extra effort?
If you have extra sauce, it'll keep for six months in the freezer. It's a little more effort to flat-pack your sauces and soups, sure. But if you're out of room in your freezer, the reality is that yes, it is worth it. It's quick and easy to freeze sauces and other liquids like stock in a plastic tub or a jar, but unless you're stacking perfect squares top to bottom in the freezer, those containers take up space inefficiently. Chances are good that if you grab whatever available container you have and package up your sauce to be frozen in it, you're just delaying the inevitable time sink waiting for you when you have to reorganize the freezer to fit anything else in it.
Do you need a quarter sheet pan to accomplish this outcome of a perfectly organized freezer? Technically, no. If you don't have a quarter sheet pan, you can put cooled sauce into an airtight bag and let it freeze in the bag, but you're putting a lot of faith into the structural integrity of that zipper top. Melissa Clark told Rachel Ray the quarter sheet pan has "saved [her] life, so if you don't have one, everybody should go get one." You'll probably end up using it more than you expect.