A common question people ask is how long can leftovers be kept for. Well, as I go along I’ll pass on my personal experience on this, with a couple of caveats.

Recent dishes I have refrigerated and eaten are;

Frozen

Pork Vindaloo (from 2 weeks ago, still have 2 portions frozen)

Malaysian Beef Curry (from 4 weeks ago)

Braised Pork Shoulder (last week)

Refrigerated

Spare Ribs and Watercress Soup (eaten on the third day)

I re-heated all by microwaving. 

In all cases, keeping quality was fine. I did very slightly overdo the microwaving for the pork vindaloo, so there were some dry spots on the meat.

For the soup, the flavours matured somewhat, which was very nice. But with mature flavours, saltiness does become more apparent, so if you will refrigerate anything, go easy on the salt. That said, we do use very little salt at home and we are thus pretty sensitive to salty tastes.

Now the food safety part.

Caveats

1) I observe strict hygiene, so I wash my hands very often during food prep and cooking, and take care to avoid cross-contamination, ie knives, boards, plates etc used for raw foods do not come in contact with cooked food. Contaminated food is unsafe to keep.

2) Leftovers are promptly put into clean covered containers and as soon as cool enough, usually in 1 - 2 hours max, are put in the fridge or freezer as appropriate. They never ever sit out for longer than 4 hours (this is a very common limit on exposure at room temperature, unless you are an Eskimo at the North Pole), and if I forget to refrigerate and find them out the next morning, I discard without even sniffing the food.

All dishes mentioned are on my website - just go into the recipe page, enter the recipe name in the Search Box on the upper right corner and hit enter or click search. Easy as that.

Be economical, and be safe! 

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.

Every day seems to bring another oil price increase. Gas (petrol) prices go up, transport costs increase, food prices go up. Inflation is at ever increasing levels. The newspapers and TV news channels are full of news about how this is hitting people really hard. When does it ever end? It’s hard to stay off the soap box at times like this. I have been working on a short series of articles explaining some of the economics of food, in clear simple terms that anyone will appreciate. No need to join the ranks of jargon spewing talking- heads, if you know what I mean.

But until that is ready, I would like to share some of my tips for economising on food expenses. I am not going to go into the economics of why, that will be dealt with in my articles.

Only Eat Out If Necessary

Eating out, in whatever style or form, is simply going to cost more than if you eat at home.

If You Have to Eat Out, Stay Away From Flash

A food-court, hawker centre or no frills restaurant is cheaper than a place with ambience. Air may be free, ambience costs money. Your money!

Frozen Meals Cost More

You pay for convenience. If you cook exactly the same items yourself, you will save money.

Process and Prepare Food Yourself

Within reason - I am not going to suggest that you start slaughtering livestock, or butchering it.

I am referring to simple stuff like salads; if you do not buy the ready-to-eat packs, but instead buy a selection, and wash and trim them yourself, you save quite a bit. If that is not possible, at least buy some long lasting salads like Cos Lettuce, and use these to supplement the prepared salads, so that they stretch longer.

Buy As Much As You Can Use, No More.

I am as guilty of this as anyone else. Sometimes, despite my best intentions, the weekly grocery trip results in waste. Food spoils because I did not cook it in time as planned, and it is usually perishable items like leafy vegetables. Minimise purchases of items that perish quickly, and plan to use those items first when you cook during the week.

If The Leftovers Won’t Keep, Cook Smaller Portions.

Some leftovers simply do not keep for more than a day or two, and do not freeze well. Better to cook too little of these, than too much. If a whole pack of vegetables is too much for one meal, split it into 2 or more portions and cook on different days.

If the Leftovers Will Keep, Throw Nothing Away.

That’s right, nothing.

A little soup will supplement a later meal. Soups can generally last for 3 days in the refrigerator, much longer if frozen.

A half portion of meat can be frozen until you get another half portion of something else, and together they make a meal.

Or use meat or chicken to make a sandwich, or as an addition to pasta.

I even keep extra fried noodles for a day or two, and microwave them for a snack.

If The Leftovers Can Be Frozen, Never Cook For 1 or 2 Persons.

By cooking a larger batch and freezing the extra, you save time and money.

Time, because it is not that much more work to cook 600g / 21oz of beef, rather than 400g / 14oz. Or 800g / 28oz for that matter. Simply re-heating a dish or 2 during the week saves you having to cook from scratch. Great when you have had a long day at work or whatever.

Money, because you can eat your home-made frozen food rather than a more expensive commercial one.

Cooked Foods That Freeze Well.

Curries freeze well, unless very heavy on the garlic. Think of it as a long marinade. For that matter, chewy portions of beef that I have used in Indonesian Rendang came out more tender after a week or 2 in the freezer.

Stews also freeze well. In fact, the classic French Beef Stew, Bouef Bourguignon, is highly recommended as a candidate for freezing.

Cooked Foods That Refrigerate Well.

Overnight, or for a couple of days, curries, soups and indeed most stuff will do well . As a rough guide, if it spoils easily when not refrigerated, be careful about it even when you refrigerate.

For example, if a curry has a lot of coconut milk in it, I am wary of keeping it unfrozen for anything more than a day, even though it is in the fridge promptly after cooking.

How Long Can I keep It?

Just do a search on “Food Storage Guidelines” and you will find many articles by universities, the FDA, and Agricultural Department. In at least one of them, you will find the answer you are looking for.

Freezing Cooked Food.

I use a selection of containers that are safe from freezer straight to microwave. They cost more, but wear well. Just beware that even though they are microwave safe, if you are microwaving dry food, the container can start to melt. I learnt that the hard way when I was microwaving Indonesian Rendang that I had kept in the freezer. It was a dry dish, and when the spice paste started to burn, it melted the bottom of the container. If in doubt, go slow.

The containers I use are:-

Top left 2.5 lt / 2.6 qt. - for very large portions, eg 2 servings of a one-dish meal like stew, or something with big bones like lamb shank or ox-tail soup. Top right 1 lt. / 1 qt. for 2 portions soup or a curry that’s enough for 2 persons, or a single portion of a one-dish meal. Bottom left and right 400ml / 14 oz, these are my workhorses that I use for single portions of soups, curries, stir-fries etc, that are great for weekday lunches, as a cheaper alternative to a frozen meal. Not shown are the 250ml / 8 oz small containers that I use for storing stuff like remaining tomato paste, extra sliced lime etc.

And a peek inside my freezer:-

Left, blue capped containers, back to front are 1 container concentrated pork stock, stacked 3 large and 1 small container Ceylon Chicken Curry (Great stuff!!!) and a dry chicken curry in front that I had for lunch.
Right, rectangular containers, back to front are Galangal (experimenting with freezing cut portions), front top roasted tomato soup and front bottom meatballs in pasta sauce.

I looked for more of the 400 ml / 14 oz containers recently, but the store had run out of them so I will have to try again later.

I’m not going to plug the brand, email me if you need to know.