I mentioned in the post that I would give an update on how well the dish took to freezing.

Well, I’m pleased to report that it does keep well and taste and texture do not suffer as a result of freezing.

I defrosted only in the microwave, as I am not a huge fan of microwaving vegetables and the like. Then to complete reheating, I put the thawed braised pork and cloud ear fungus into a shallow bowl, which I then put in the electric rice-cooker. The one I have includes a steamer insert, so once the rice is cooked and it switches to keep warm mode, I put in the insert and the bowl. It heats through in about 20 minutes.

If you do not have the steamer insert, you can also put the bowl directly onto the cooked rice. In any case, just be sure that you use oven mitts to handle the bowl when removing, as it gets very hot. 

And if you do not use an electric rice-cooker at all, or if you are reheating a large portion, you can always reheat gently on the stove top.

Only two points are firstly, I wish I had more gravy, it is delicious and more would be nice. Secondly, there was a very slight powdery feel to the mushrooms, which only I noticed, and this is perhaps because there was not enough gravy to submerge the mushrooms in the freezer. Nothing too obvious, as I was the only one who noticed it. And the overall taste was great, just like curries and stews which improve with freezing.

So, all told a good candidate for bulk cooking and freezing.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under Asian Food, Combining Recipes, Cooking, Cooking Tips, Food, Improvising in the kitchen, Inflation Busting, Learning to Cook, Malaysian Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.