Reheating 101

September 4, 2015 5:44 AM

Inspired by this question, I'm thinking about putting in a couple of hours on Sunday to do a bunch of cooking healthy foods to eat throughout the week. But then... what? How do you learn how to reheat all the foods for maximum deliciousness?

Here's the problem: I love the idea of cooking huge batches of food, and I've even done so and frozen it, but then we never, never, never eat them and they get moldy or freezerburned because ugh reheated food, it's just not as tasty. Ugh, ugh.

I've learned a couple of neat tricks over the years, like sprinkling water on stale bread or bagels and then baking them for a few minutes to freshen them up, or stirring a little milk into leftover mac and cheese before you microwave it. But for the most part, I find reheated foods wind up with horrible texture problems. Too dry or too limp or separated or not crispy anymore or... you know. Just kind of sad.

Am I just really terrible at reheating things? Is there some sort of reference or method for learning how to reheat stuff? And how to make yourself actually pull the gallon bag of bean soup out of your freezer instead of going to Chipotle? Or should I be putting stuff in the fridge on Sunday, not the freezer? But if I did wouldn't it all go bad by Friday?!

I have a microwave, stove, and toaster oven at my disposal. Thanks!

posted by Andrhia to Food & Drink (12 answers total)

You could make the cheese sauce for mac-n-cheese, then come home, cook (reheat) the pasta, stir in the sauce. Soups and stews reheat well, and may improve. Long, slow cooking is perfect for brisket and other meat, and then you have tender meat that can be heated and eaten on rice or potatoes, or as barbecue. Leftover lasagne tends to get dry, but if you saved sauce, you can make it great again by heating the lasagne and the sauce, and pouring it over to serve.

First, make sure your soups and stews are truly delicious. Then, pull it out of the freezer in the morning so you know you have a genuinely fast, tasty meal waiting at home.
posted by theora55 at 6:07 AM on September 4, 2015

And how to make yourself actually pull the gallon bag of bean soup out of your freezer

Well gosh, don't do that. Freeze that kind of thing in portions. When I do a big batch of soup or sauce or whatever, I get a bunch of quart size ziplocks out and ladle enough to make a meal into each one of them. Press the air out, freeze them flat, then you can easily stack them like file folders in your freezer and pull them out one at a time. If you want to go completely crazy, write what each thing is on the zip end so you really can sort them like file folders.

To reheat things like that I thaw first by plunking the ziplocked food into a bowl of room temp water and only heating it once it's completely thawed. Makes the texture better than a straight reheat from frozen.
posted by phunniemee at 6:11 AM on September 4, 2015 [7 favorites]

I defrost in the microwave (or the fridge overnight if I'm smart and think ahead), and then either pan fry or roast for optimal crispiness. Often while frying or roasting I sprinkle a bit of lemon whatever matching spice on it to enliven things a bit/make everything smell more delicious while cooking.

I also don't free in massive portions (those never get defrosted) we freeze either in quart bags, or in 1 serving portions. Much easier to actually use then.

And this may not be optimal food safety, but I find that food lasts about 4-5 days in the fridge. So a massive batch on Sunday will get distributed into lunches& dinners for the week and keep fine.
posted by larthegreat at 6:13 AM on September 4, 2015 [3 favorites]

One thing that I've done to make my leftovers way tastier is to either heat them up on the stovetop or use the microwave but never higher than 60% power. Lower heat for longer time tends to keep things moist. Stir halfway through if using the microwave.

Also, use butter instead of milk for reheated mac and cheese to keep things from getting too soupy.
posted by Twicketface at 6:21 AM on September 4, 2015

It's slower, but lately I've found i get better results, texture-wise, if I reheat food in the same way I cooked it, rather than reaching for the microwave. So a pasta might get reheated in a skillet, or meat pies in the oven or toaster oven.

Another thing I do is think about what ingredients in a dish will reheat poorly, and store those separately. For example, there's a pasta dish I like to make that gets a little bit of spinach wilted in at the end. Reheating it all together would make the spinach mushy than I like it. So what I do is stop before adding the spinach, cool everything I don't want to eat the first day, and then just add one serving of spinach. When I reheat, i take the pasta without spinach, get it hot, then add one serving of spinach fresh from the package in the fridge.
posted by anne_severson at 6:25 AM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I find that moisture is my friend when I'm reheating something. So many stews and stewlike items seem to suck up liquid and thicken when they're stored - so if I'm doing an encore presentation of, say, a batch of chili, I'll tip a little bit of chicken stock, tomato juice, or just plain water (whatever I have on hand) into it while it's heating. Not enough to make it soupy, just enough to keep things loose.

This post from The Kitchn has some additional tips you might find useful; one I especially agree with is the advice to reheat pizza on the stove.
posted by DingoMutt at 7:08 AM on September 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

If I'm doing a bunch of cooking with plans of reheating, I always try to undercook whatever I can. Noodles are made extra al dente, so that when I reheat they are properly al dente. Veggies are only half-cooked. Anything that needs to be cooked at a different temperature is kept separate. Etc, etc.

Also as far as reheating goes, it's always stove/oven>toaster oven>microwave. Microwaves are the devil. I don't even own one anymore.

A good trick for reheating the vast majority of things is adding a little water first. In the oven I'll even sometimes put a little tray of water in like you do when making bread. I put water in the drip tray in my toaster oven, but I'm not sure that's great for the toaster oven or even safe to have that much humidity by an electric heating element.

But yeah, sometimes even just doing the prep work the week before can make cooking each night so much easier. Sometimes I'll just cook up a bunch of chicken breasts, some pork chops, and then put them in the fridge. Then I chop a bunch of veggies and either partially steam them or just put them raw into containers. Rinse/drain some beans and do the same.

Then when dinner comes I just take all the ingredients out, toss them in a pan, and I have a good tasting dinner in 5 minutes. I can also mix things up during the week by using different seasoning or included/excluding ingredients.

(Also on preview, pan fried pizza reheating is so, so good!)
posted by mayonnaises at 7:33 AM on September 4, 2015

Certain foods don't freeze well because their texture becomes unpleasant, e.g., white potatoes and green beans, so don't put them in dishes you intend to freeze (they're fine in refrigerated leftovers). Most of the brassicas, especially broccoli and Brussels sprouts, not only freeze poorly but smell terrible after refrigeration, so only use them in dishes that will be consumed entirely at that meal.

What I do in practice is make enough soup or stew for several days and stir-fry or microwave a vegetable side. I've also been known to just put a handful of Tuscan kale in the serving bowl, pour the hot stew over it and call it a (one-pot one-dish) meal. Saves cleanup, too. I'm lazy.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:16 AM on September 4, 2015

Reddit's Meal Prep Sunday has some good advice. It seems a lot of people there just refrigerate.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 8:44 AM on September 4, 2015

Some foods just don't work well as leftovers and don't freeze well. Look specifically for "freezer friendly" recipes and see if you still have the same problems. For example, I don't think chili suffers at all from being in the freezer. I just reheat it (slowly) in a pot on the stove and it's good. Most soups also do very well in the freezer as long as they aren't cream-based and don't contain potato chunks.

In many cases, it does help if you still add something fresh to the food after it's been reheated, like putting fresh cheese or sour cream on the chili, or sprinkling fresh herbs on the soup. FYI, cornbread freezes well too, as do homemade dinner rolls, as long as you wrap them tight before freezing. Frozen bread usually reheats beautifully in the toaster oven, but take it out of the freezer maybe 20 minutes before you toast it.

Try to freeze stuff in one- or two-serving portions. You don't want to put foods through the cycle of thawing and refreezing because that will more likely lead to unappealing textures and flavors. If you don't have plastic containers small enough for this, it's worth getting some. I freeze stuff in plastic Chinese takeout/soup containers all the time. (Don't reheat in those containers though.) Also, try to plan ahead and put the frozen container in the fridge the day before you eat it unless the recipe advises going straight from freezer to microwave. Planning ahead will also help you avoid this:

And how to make yourself actually pull the gallon bag of bean soup out of your freezer instead of going to Chipotle?

Remind yourself that that bean soup you made is probably way cheaper than pretty much anything Chipotle has. Also, make sure the bean soup or whatever is delicious and something you actually enjoy eating, and you might actually look forward to these frozen leftovers.

This page has some good tips about freezing and reheating soups.
posted by bananana at 11:31 AM on September 4, 2015

I think the whole point of making a batch of food on Sunday for the week is that you don't freeze it. Food changes after it's frozen -- its texture changes, its flavor may change. The frozen stuff you buy at the store has been designed to be frozen, but if you are eating something in two days, just put it in the fridge. Also, thawing/heating something that is a frozen block requires a lot more effort, which totally undermines the idea of cooking in advance to make the meals convenient. There is absolutely no need to freeze something you will eat in a few days -- make a batch on Sunday and then put it in your refrigerator in a good sealed container.

To reheat? Microwave. This week I made a big batch of seasoned pinto beans, brown rice and then I had avocados, cheese, sour cream, salsa and green onions on hand. I made some delicious bowls by putting a couple scoops of rice in a bowl, topped with a few scoops of beans, then microwaving it, then topping with all my cold ingredients.
posted by AppleTurnover at 1:28 PM on September 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reheat pizza in a lidded non-stick pan on the stovetop, on low-med temperature. This applies to anything crusty and not too liquid, like savoury pies (not the kind with sauce or gravy), spanakopita, bean burgers, etc.

I find that potatoes don't freeze well in liquid. They seem to get kind of mealy texture. If I'm making soup/stew to freeze, I use barley/beans or omit the starchy stuff. (Maybe potatoes don't freeze well at all. I hate frozen fries and haven't tried freezing potatoes any other way.)

If you have wet dishes (soups, saucy stuff) that benefits from being thawed/reheated slowly on the stovetop, you can freeze it in the pot that you'll us to reheat, then pop it out and put in a baggie. Then when you go to thaw/reheat, it fits the pot.

Thawing slowly seems best. Overnight in the fridge seems to be the best way to prevent sauces from separating.

One way to speed up room-temperature thawing is to put the food on a metal pan, which conducts heat. We do this with frozen raw meat all the time, just unwrap and toss it on a cookie sheet. It also works with leftovers if they are flat enough to fully contact the metal surface.

Thawing in the microwave never seems to go well for me.

I agree with everyone who said most foods cooked Sunday will last until Friday. Maybe not fish, though. Rot spreads, so clean out old foods out of your fridge weekly or they can make other stuff go bad faster.

How you freeze stuff can also affect the temperature. Let foods cool down properly can prevent watery/iciness and squeezing all the air out of bags helps prevent freezer burn.
posted by Frenchy67 at 8:31 AM on September 6, 2015