4 Amazing Freezer Hacks to Help Keep Food Fresh & Prevent Waste

1. Freezing citrus 

My sister-in-law has a lime tree and recently gave us a bunch of limes. I have been doing this method for over three years, and I love freezing citrus. All you do is take any citrus you want, slice it however you want, dab it on a paper towel, and then lay the slices on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. 

Freeze them, and you're going to have the most delicious citrus. You do want to keep everything wiped clean because you don't want any moisture to build up on the slices or they won't freeze right.  

Once the citrus is frozen, you can take each piece and put them in a freezer Ziploc bag. They freeze for up to a year. They are so awesome. 

I love putting them in my hot tea to cool it down to just the right temperature.  

2. Freezing celery

Next, I love freezing a whole bag of celery. Have you ever bought celery for one recipe and then the rest of it goes bad in your refrigerator because you don't know how to use it or you forget that it's there? Instead of just using up what I need for one recipe when I get home from the store.

I'll take the whole package and chop up all of the celery and freeze it into one-cup portions.

I love this method because I'm not being wasteful. I'm using up all the celery, and it's staying in the freezer ready for when I need it. I love being able to just pull out a one-cup portion for a recipe.  

3. Freezing fresh spinach

The large containers of fresh spinach are such a great value, but I don't like having them in my refrigerator. What I do is I put them in these freezer Ziploc bags, and I store them in the freezer. I love having spinach for smoothies or soups. 

Here’s one of my greatest tricks. When you need spinach for a recipe like spaghetti sauce or soup, take your frozen bag of spinach out of the freezer and crinkle the bag up with your hands. Now you have perfectly chopped spinach, perfect for every recipe. I hope you enjoy it.  

4. Freezing garlic cubes 

At Trader Joe's, they have those little containers of frozen garlic cubes. However, when I looked at the ingredients, I was shocked to see that there was canola oil in them. Canola oil causes inflammation, and that's something that I try to stay away from. 

So I decided to create my own, and I bought a little bag of peeled garlic. It's the same price as those little cubes of garlic, and you get way more. So for $2.99, you can make so many more garlic cubes. All you want to do is pour the whole bag into a mini food processor and add ¼ cup of water. 

You are going to have to start and stop your mini food processor just to get all of the garlic incorporated. 

So after you get the garlic about halfway done, then you want to add another ¼ cup of water. 

I love this method. It's so easy. You're going to get the most delicious garlic cubes, I promise. 

After you see that you have a beautiful garlic paste, add salt as much as you want. I just sprinkle some in there and it's going to give that garlic some great flavor as well as just make it more creamy.

When you take a garlic clove and you smash it on a cutting board and add salt, it creates a beautiful garlic paste. That is what we're going for.  

You can use any ice cube tray you want to freeze the garlic cubes. I found this tray at Dollar Tree. The holes are smaller so this is about a two garlic clove amount and I love that it has the silicone at the bottom to help release the garlic cubes. 

Place the garlic paste into each individual ice cube section and freeze.

Freezer hacks

I hope you guys got some great ideas from my freezer hacks. With a little creativity, you can freeze foods to make your life easier. What freezer hacks do you have to share? Let us know in the comments!