Winter is coming faster than you expect. Now that September is here, it’s time for you to start getting your home ready so you can go into your semi-hibernation mode for the season when the weather gets cold.
One common feature of Midwestern homes is the extra freezer for meats and precooked meals. It might be a chest freezer, or it might be another refrigerator you have in your basement or garage with the freezer space dedicated specifically to meats. A lot of people tend to stock up on items in the fall so they can work through them during the winter. This can be very helpful when you’ve got rough weather outside and simply don’t want to have to deal with the snow and ice to make a trip to the grocery store.
It can be helpful to take a few steps to prepare your freezer in Alexandria, IN for storing your meals and meat bundles for the season. Here are just a few steps you can take before stocking up:
- Go through remaining meals and foods: If you still have any meals or meats in your dedicated freezer, now’s a good time to go through them and plan as many meals as you can based around the ingredients you already have. This will help you make sure you’re fully stocked with new, fresher foods during the winter, and that you avoid the items in your freezer getting ruined by freezer burn. It has the added benefit of saving you some money on groceries in the immediate future.
- Defrost: Once you’ve got your freezer space sufficiently cleared out, it’s a good idea to defrost it. Doing this once a year, or every other year, can help you create a cleaner space that is more conducive to long-term food storage and also prevents freezer burn from occurring. You’ll need to remove anything that’s still in there and place it in a cooler or in another freezer while defrosting and cleaning.
- Restock: When the defrosting process is complete, you get to restock the freezer. You don’t need to do this all at once—you can purchase bulk meat orders in Alexandria, IN and make meals gradually so you don’t have to spend a ton of time or money getting and preparing items to put in there. Start with just a couple meals or cuts of meat, and work your way up from there throughout the winter. The goal with clearing out and defrosting is to give yourself plenty of space to work with throughout the forthcoming season, which will be especially useful around the holidays.
- Label: For anything you package up, make sure you clearly label the contents of the package and the day on which you froze it. You’re otherwise bound to forget what certain items are as you collect more and more in your freezer.
To learn more about the best ways to keep your freezer organized this winter, or to place your bulk meat order, contact Horner’s Midtown Market in Alexandria, IN today.