Freezing Dairy and Eggs

What Freezes Well

Milk freezes and comes back fine, though it separates as it thaws and looks alarming until you shake it. Pour a little out of a full bottle first, because it expands. Semi-skimmed and whole both work; thaw in the fridge and use within a few days.

Butter is the easiest thing in this list. It freezes for months with no change worth noticing, and it is worth buying extra when it is cheap.

Hard cheese freezes but changes texture - cheddar comes out crumblier and does not slice as cleanly. That makes it worse on a sandwich and completely fine grated into a sauce, a bake or on top of pasta. Grate before freezing and it goes straight from freezer to pan.

What Splits, and What to Do with It

Cream, creme fraiche, soured cream and yoghurt all separate when frozen and thawed, because the water and fat come apart and will not recombine by stirring. They are not unsafe, they are just no longer smooth.

That does not make them useless. Split cream still works stirred into a hot sauce, a soup or a curry, where it is being incorporated into something anyway. What it will not do is sit on a dessert or go into coffee.

Soft cheeses - brie, mozzarella, cottage cheese, ricotta - are the same story with the same answer. Freeze them only if the plan is to cook with them.

Eggs: Out of the Shell, Always

An egg is mostly water and water expands. Frozen in the shell it cracks, which ruins it and creates a contamination risk from shell fragments and leaked contents. This is the one hard rule here.

Out of the shell they freeze well. Beat whole eggs lightly and freeze in portions - an ice cube tray works, and a couple of cubes is roughly one egg. Whites freeze cleanly on their own. Yolks thicken unpleasantly unless you beat in a pinch of salt or sugar first, depending on what you plan to use them for.

Cooked egg dishes are less successful. Frittata and quiche freeze acceptably; scrambled and boiled eggs come back rubbery and watery, so those are worth cooking fresh.

The Practical Use for All This

The point is not to freeze dairy routinely - it is to stop the part-used pack becoming waste. Half a tub of cream, the end of a block of cheddar, milk that will turn before you get through it: all of that has somewhere to go instead of the bin.

Label what you freeze with the date and the intended use, because "cream, for cooking" is a much more useful note in three weeks than an unmarked tub you no longer trust.