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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Kitchen Tips - Sauces & Gravies

One of our favorite things to eat are individual pizzas. The reason I say "individual" is because I like my pizza with low fat ranch dressing, broccoli, tomatoes, and mozzarella, while hubby likes his with pizza sauce, sausage, and mozzarella. If you don't take advantage of your freezer, you will be wasting a lot of food! I do go through my salad dressing soon enough because I eat a lot of salads, use it for dipping veggies, pizzas, etc. But Brian can't possibly eat a whole can of pizza sauce in a safe amount of time eating a small pizza here and there. So I take full advantage of my freezer.

After I open the can and put sauce on his pizza. I simply drop the sauce by spoonfuls onto waxed paper (parchment paper will work too), pop it in the freezer, bag after frozen, and use one or two as I need them. I also have pre-cooked sausage, pre-made crusts, and frozen broccoli in there ready to go.


I always have the pre-made grocery store crusts on hand but if I have some time (usually in winter) I'll make up a big batch of pizza dough, let it rise once, then divide it into individual sized portions and put each in a plastic baggie, and then freeze in one large bag. That's the best! They take very little time to thaw.

I've also found that those silicone cupcake cups are wonderful for freezing small portions of gravy (Brian likes it occasionally, I don't), broth, tomato soup, sauces and anything else you might otherwise waste. Like the pizza sauce, just pop them out once frozen and throw in one big bag.