Money Saving Mondays - Freezing Bulk Cheeses

While I was grocery shopping at Safeway today, I noticed they had their large bags of shredded cheese on sale. I am always needing different types of cheeses for recipes, but with only two of us, it's not practical to have them all on hand all the time. The best solution is to buy in bulk and freeze the cheese for later use.



I don't know that I would thaw blocks of cheese to slice and use after thawing. I have read that others have had success with this, but frankly, I'm a little chicken. Since I use shredded cheeses in recipes where the cheese will be melted (like enchiladas, pizzas, pasta dishes, and casseroles) I knew I could freeze it without worrying about its texture when it thaws. 

Almost all of the recipes where I will be using this shredded cheese use between 1 and 2 cups. I decided to divide my cheese into 2 cup portions. I did this with Mozzarella, Monterey Jack, and Mexican 4-Cheese blend. 

It only took me about 15 minutes to divide all the cheese into baggies, label, and pop into the freezer. Now all I have to do when I need shredded cheese is pull a baggie out. 

You can obviously divide the cheese in whatever portions make sense to you. You could even leave it all together, but you might have more trouble breaking chunks off to use every time (Think of how frozen spinach sticks together). 

So, the next time your local grocery store or supermarket is having a killer sale on cheese, don't be afraid to grab some up and let your freezer do the rest of the work! 

- - Happy Savings! - -

What other foods do you freeze to save money?

2 comments:

christina said...

oh yes, i always freeze our shredded cheese although we use it up so quickly im not sure why i freeze now that i think about it. but yes, it works great.

Megan said...

Are you sure?? Something about freezing cheese sounds odd to me.... but I'll have to try it! Thanks for sharing!