Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now, what should you freeze and what shouldn't you freeze? Well, who better to give us some tips on how to get the most out of our freezer? But Orla Drumgoole, who's the author of Irish Mammy Cooks and Orla is here. Do you love your freezer?
I love my freezer. In fact, I love all my freezers. I have three of them, Clare.
Chapter 2: What should you freeze and what shouldn't you freeze?
Three freezers? Yes, three freezers. Why? Pray tell.
Because I grew up in a house with nine children and a working mother. And so Mammy always had a chest freezer. And even when she died, this is the terrible thing, when she died, we found some of her tart in the bottom of her freezer. It had been there a year and we ate it. Yeah, well, you did because tart freezes really well. Yeah.
So we have always, I've always grown up in a house with batch cooking and freezing things.
Chapter 3: Why does the guest love their freezer so much?
And I suppose as the years have gone on, I've kind of tried to be more mindful and not throw everything out. So nowadays, I freeze everything. Like if I have a lemon and I'm going on holidays, you can throw that into the freezer because... Oh, really? Yeah, wash the skin before you put it in and then you can zest it straight from the freezer.
You can put it into the microwave and you get fabulous juice from it. That's a great idea.
idea, zesting, like sort of like what you would do with ginger, which is great from the freezer, isn't it?
Oh, it's absolutely fantastic. I used to zest it and I used to grate it and put it in. And now my sister said to me, why do you grate it first? And actually it's much better. It's much easier.
So much easier. So now we were having a little chat there in the ad break and I was talking to you about the freezer. We have kind of a funny relationship with it. And I think I've figured it out. I'm not mad about putting cooked things into the freezer and eating them afterwards. I think they're just not the same. Like if you have raw meat that you buy or chicken or whatever, that's grand.
Put it in, defrost it and cook it. But a cooked leftover dinner, frozen, taken out, defrosted.
Do you know the amazing thing? I love the little Chinese takeaway containers. Yeah. And what I started doing in recent times with Mam, for example, was... When you'd have your Sunday dinner and there was always leftover, always make extra mashed potato, always make extra vegetables, always make a bit of extra gravy. And then you literally put a dinner into a Chinese tub and then you take it out.
The full dinner.
The full dinner, because then you don't have, because if you just put the meat in, sometimes you're kind of looking, it'll sit there forever.
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Chapter 4: What tips does Orla share for freezing fruits and vegetables?
Or, you know, but it's really handy if you do that. And the gravy works really, really well. You put a lid on it, you put a little few drops of water on it and you microwave it. And it is literally like Sunday dinner all over again. And I found that's really helpful. Same thing with curry and rice. Don't throw out your rice and don't freeze it all in one batch.
Put the curry and the rice together, put the satay and the rice together, and then you have a dinner and you can send your college students away with it for dinner on Monday because they have soccer or music or whatever happens to be on. So I think that doing it in a sensible way is good. Also using parchment, Clare.
If you put in your sliced meat, I always slice the meat before I put it into the freezer. Slice it and put just a little tiny layer of parchment between.
In between.
And then you can take out two slices at a time.
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm already thinking the Christmas ham. That's a good idea for the ham.
Well, I always do that. That post every year gets loads of views because people go, I never thought of that. But it's so handy. And it just means that you actually use it. We used the last of our Christmas turkey last week.
Oh, did you?
And I know people say, oh my God, it's only supposed to be there for a month. It's so far down in my chest freezer, it's not going to come to any harm. And it was very tasty. I just put it in, but make sure if you heat it, that you put a lid on it. Or if you heat it in the oven, put it into tinfoil with a little bit of parchment, a little bit of butter on top.
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Chapter 5: How can you freeze cooked meals effectively?
So before you freeze them, put a bit of lemon juice on them.
What I do with them is before I freeze them, I poach them in a little bit of water. So I put a litre of water into a pot. I put 50 grams of sugar and 50 mils of Cointreau. And then I use that to kind of poach the apples. And that will do for 15 apples. And you just literally take them out with a slotted spoon. You put them into a tub and you freeze them. And they are perfect.
They work really well in tarts, in crumbles. For stewed apples and custard, they're delicious. On top of your yogurt, they're really good.
Yeah, it's a great way to preserve them because they do go to waste otherwise. I mean, you can wrap them in all the newspaper you want, but if you have a bad apple in there.
And honestly, the newspapers have never worked for me and that's why I have just started doing that with them. And then you can use the peels to make pectin. You just put the peels and the pips into a... This is getting very complicated now. No, it's so easy.
You just peel your apples, throw them into a saucepan and you just put water over them, boil it up with a bit of lemon juice and then take out the peels and just reduce that down. And that's pectin, which really helps your jam.
Of course, the freezer really comes into its own when it comes to bread. And I know you're a big bread maker. So how...
Yeah.
You're wincing.
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