Ready Meals suitable for home freezing

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Passport1

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Are those carvery ready meals you buy in the supermarket like the ones in Aldi e.g. suitable for home freezing

It says to keep them refrigerated under 5 degrees on the packaging but nothing about if they are suitable for home freezing
 
If it gives no home freezing directions on the packets you can take it as a certainty that are unsuitable for home freezing.
 
Agreed, but it scares me when you cant freeze a ready meal - if you take the ingredients to make the meal...as in the meat and veg, they can be frozen...so what else is in there... :mad:
 
I think there's two types of ready meals though, some are pre-cooked and just need 4 minutes in microwave to finish the job and warm them up.
Some are not, and they are the ones that are safe to freeze.

In ALDI, you could freeze the lasagne, cottage pie type ready meals as they haven't been pre-cooked.
 
AHEALY said:
Agreed, but it scares me when you cant freeze a ready meal - if you take the ingredients to make the meal...as in the meat and veg, they can be frozen...so what else is in there... :mad:
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You can't, or at least shouldn't re-freeze meat, perhaps they're using meat which was previously frozen?
 
Leo said:
You can't, or at least shouldn't re-freeze meat, perhaps they're using meat which was previously frozen?
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Why shouldn't you freeze meat? We have always bought unfrozen meat at the supermarket, put it in the deep freeze when we get home and defrost it 24 hours before we cook it.
 
As leo said you shouldn't "refreeze" meat.

I've often bought raw meat, frozen it, thawed it and then cooked for example a curry.
The cooked meat can then be safely frozen and reheated later.

As per bord bia's website:

If frozen meat has defrosted, refreezing is not recommended unless it is cooked first, for a number of reasons:
  • The quality suffers each time frozen meat is defrosted and refrozen.
  • Freezing creates ice crystals within the structure of the meat (as meat contains a high percentage of water). These ice crystals rupture the fibre which causes the meat to bleed when defrosted. If repeated, the texture of the meat will be very dry.

Never refreeze meat which has been thawed and held at room temperature.
 
SBarrett said:
At €4 a dinner, you would question whether it's meat at all!! ;)
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Ah now SBarrett I think you are being a bit of a sceptic, it is definitely meat, the only question might be - is it horse meat, guinea pig meat, camel meat…………………….
 
I think that answer given on link is just about right. It's because people cannot be trusted to store and reheat correctly and will then claim if they poison themselves so easier for producer to protect themselves with disclaimers.

I wouldn't be one for buying ready meals but freeze a lot of homemade ones, I always have bacon cooked and sliced in freezer and blanched cabbage (only because you buy a head and it's too big to eat in one go so I blanch and freeze it for future use). It takes about 7/8 mins to cook the cabbage, pop the frozen slices of bacon on top and they are thawed and hot in same time and a spud is done in the microwave in about same time. A good dinner ready in 10 mins, ok there is no white sauce but I like brown sauce with my bacon and cabbage :)
 
Passport1 said:
Are those carvery ready meals you buy in the supermarket like the ones in Aldi
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No idea, nor no idea about freezing them but am firmly convinced that they are the worst thing ever. You have no way of knowing what goes into them, the type of meat, the addititives, the sugars, the taste deceptors. I actually think they should be banned.
 
Bronte said:
No idea, nor no idea about freezing them but am firmly convinced that they are the worst thing ever. You have no way of knowing what goes into them, the type of meat, the addititives, the sugars, the taste deceptors. I actually think they should be banned.
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You could say exactly the same thing about any meal ordered in a restaurant...

If you have leftover readymeal, leave it out of the fridge and see if it starts going off... that's usually a good indication you have real food on your hands.
 
The other reason that some meals are not suitable for freezing may be that they have not been packaged for freezing.

Food does deteriorate in texture in the freezer and food that is not properly sealed will not last. It might be safe, but not necessarily as nice as it would have been when it was fresh
 
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