Freezing


 
D

D Brazil

TVWBB Member
Ok, one reason I got the 22.5 smoker is that often times I don't have a lot of time during the week and head for the freezer for something I can thaw and just warm-up. So my plan is to smoke quite a bit of meat and divide it in meals and than deep freeze the meat. I am condidering buying a vacuum sealer??? any thoughts on these? Do I need to? or can I just freeze in freezer bags. I'm not sure how freezing affects the taste of smoked meats ? I'm looking for some advice or comments from people who have done this for a while.
 
I freeze leftovers after all of my cooks and I use ziplock freezer bags. I think the key is bringing your meat up to temp slowley so what I do is let it thaw completly in the fridge and then place the bag into boiling water and warm it up to my liking.What is nice about this is that most of the smokey flavor stays in the bag and the meat remains moist due to the steam.One other thing try to get as much air out of the bag as possible before sealing it up.I hope this helps good luck.
 
I vacuum seal smoked meat with great success. I also buy hamburger in bulk, cook it up, drain it ans vacuum seal it. I then have hamburger ready for tacos, pasta sauce, sloppy joes, etc. The sealer makes stuff last much longer in the freezer.
 
I bought a Foodsaver (model V3840) a few months back while on sale for around $90. It's worked well so far.

We don't use it a whole lot but enough to know we need to buy the bags on sale. I get an email on bag sales once every couple of weeks I guess. There are some alternative bag suppliers but I've not tried them. I'll stick to buying the bags on sale.
 
I agree using a vacuum seal will make things last longer frozen but most of the time we use our meat up within a couple of weeks, plus I am to cheap to spend the money on the machine and spend extra for the bags. After a couple of weeks I am itchin to but some more meat on the smoker anyway so I would just use ziplock bags as they will keep meat frozen for two weeks to a month with no ill effect. Spend your extra money on more charcoal and T bones.
 
We wrap leftover bbq in saran wrap (squeeze it really tight as you wrap to get rid of air), then some aluminum foil around wrapped around that and into a Zip-Loc freezer bag. We've never had freezer burn since using this method.
 
Even cheaper--use the super-thin bags they supply for fresh veggies and a regular zip loc freezer bag.

Put the food in the thin bag and squeeze out as much air as possible then put that in the freezer bag and zip it about 9/10ths closed.

Put a straw in the freezer bag half-way and suck the rest of the air out, sealing it at the same time you pull the straw out.
 
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