NSane's Profile

Has anyone tried this with fruit or veggie toppings? I can see cheese and meat toppings doing very well. I'm wondering about how fresh pineapple would do. I love pineapple on pizza but the canned stuff is awful. It would be worth my while to cut up a fresh one if I was making several pizzas for the freezer.

This has worked really well for me for cilantro, as pictured, but basil was a massive failure and it appeared that this method may have shortened its life.

Thanks for this!

For marinara, I've actually found a different way around the muffin cup/tin method. I was making a bunch of marinara and didn't have enough cups, nor did I want to experiment with getting the frozen marinara out of a muffin tin.

I found that if I let the marinara cool completely and then let sit in the fridge for several hours or a day, it thickens very nicely. I take a sheet pan and put a silicone mat on it, then drop spoonfuls of sauce on it. The sauce isn't super thick, but it has enough surface tension to not run all over the mat. I put the whole thing in the freezer, then peel off the frozen hunks of marinara when I'm done and put them in a freezer bag.

Can you be more specific on freezing and baking instructions? At what point do we freeze them? Before or after cutting slits? If we are baking directly from frozen, is an adjustment in the cooking time necessary? Thanks!

I second the Alton Brown breakfast sausage recipe (Here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/breakfast-sausage-recipe/index.html)

We modify it in our house to make it easier by buying ground pork (we haven't graduated to grinding our own meat yet). We take the ground pork, mix in the ingredients from the recipe, form patties, and put them in the freezer. While we are mixing it up, we take a coin-sized piece of the mix and cook it up in the pan so we can taste test it an adjust seasoning.

We make these fairly often and they are in our freezer year-round.

Mashed potatoes!

I didn't have a problem with the tie-in per se, just that it felt like the show was selling out a bit in terms of the food offerings and you could tell the judges didn't like it. I know target has an "expanded" food section, but the wall of processed cheese in the store near my home is a bit too much.

I wonder if Target cringed a bit with some of the judge's comments -when Padma berated a chef for saying it was a fresh coconut milk X. She asked if there were fresh coconuts and if not, it wasn't fresh. I also think Tiffany getting bashed for using the seasoning didn't help target's image.

See the wall of processed cheese here - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?entry_id=65964

Re Flavor Changes - yes, the flavor of garlic changes the smaller you cut it. The more you break down the cell walls (i.e. the smaller you chop it) the more garlicky flavor you will get. If you cook garlic slices in oil, it will taste milder than minced garlic cooked the same way. I personally love garlicky flavor.

I was against the garlic press for a long time but someone bought me a Zyliss. I love it. I like times when I don't need to chop anything but garlic so why dirty the cutting board? I also like being able to squeeze garlic directly in the pot in a pinch, or when I need to use an insane amount of garlic for a recipe.

Question - it's not entirely clear to me that the consistency of the ice cream has to be. Softened but not melted? Does it matter?

I'll have to try this for chocolate chip cookies. I don't think it will work in every recipe though. I have a sugar cookie recipe that absolutely needs flour added in increments or else it will not incorporate. I learned that after years of being lazy and adding too much at once.