Freezer Storage Guide

Beef steaks keep 12 months. Chicken breasts keep 9 months but quality is best at 3 months. Mince keeps 3 months. Fish fillets keep 3 months, fatty fish like salmon only 2 months because the fat oxidises. Cooked rice and pasta keep 4-6 months. Bread keeps 3 months sliced. Cheese keeps 4 months for hard cheeses, less for soft. Berries keep 12 months frozen open then bagged. Cooked soup and stew keep 3 months. Most leftovers keep 3 months.

These figures assume a freezer running at -18°C or colder and food wrapped well. Domestic freezer drawers fluctuate between -15°C and -20°C as the door opens; chest freezers and upright freezers with separate doors hold temperature more reliably. Quality drops gradually past the recommended time, but food stays SAFE indefinitely if it's been continuously frozen below -18°C. Safety and quality are different questions, and the storage times in this guide are quality limits, not safety limits.

Freezer burn is what happens when moisture leaves the surface of food and forms ice crystals on the inside of the wrapping. The food is still safe but the texture goes papery and the flavour drops. Prevention: wrap food in cling film first, then a freezer bag, with as much air squeezed out as possible. For meat, wrap individually so you can defrost one portion without thawing the whole pack.

Label every bag with the food, the freeze date and the number of portions. Sharpie on a freezer bag survives months at -18°C; biro doesn't. Use a system that matches your memory: dated drawer per category ("meat from March"), or labelled bags filed front-to-back. Most freezer waste comes from nobody knowing what's in there. The [meat cooking calculator](/meat-cooking-calculator) gives defrost-and-cook times for cuts you've portioned and frozen.

Three safe defrost methods. Slowest and best: 24 hours in the fridge (a 1kg chicken breast pack thaws overnight, a whole chicken takes 24 hours per kg). Faster: cold water bath, 30 minutes per 500g, change the water every 30 minutes. Fastest: microwave defrost, then cook immediately. Never defrost meat at room temperature - the surface enters the danger zone (5-60°C) hours before the centre is thawed.

Cooked food can be reheated from frozen for many recipes (stews, curries, soups). Just transfer frozen blocks to a saucepan with a splash of water and reheat gently with a lid on, stirring as it thaws. The UK Food Standards Agency rule: reheat to 75°C internal, only once. Don't refreeze food that's been thawed once unless it's been cooked between freezes (raw chicken thawed and cooked into a curry can be frozen as curry, but raw chicken thawed and refrozen raw cannot).

Avoid freezing: raw eggs in shell (they crack), whole boiled eggs (rubbery), milk-heavy sauces (they split, though cooking them again can rescue), salad leaves (turn to mush), fried food (loses crispness), boiled potatoes (go grainy), cucumber (waterlogs), creamy soups before puree (split). Most of these have a workaround: freeze egg whites and yolks separately in ice cube trays, freeze creamy soups before adding the cream, blanch and freeze potato chunks raw rather than boiled.

Some foods freeze brilliantly that you might not expect: cooked rice (cool fast, freeze in portions, microwave 4 minutes from frozen), grated cheese (use straight from frozen on top of pasta), bananas (peel first, use in smoothies and banana bread), lemon juice in ice cube trays, herbs in olive oil in ice cube trays. The [substitute ingredient finder](/substitute-ingredient-finder) covers swaps when a fresh ingredient isn't available and the frozen version doesn't behave the same way.