Starchier produce and grains like apples, bananas, root vegetables, squashes, and rice tend to suffer less from freezing because they contain slightly less water and have more structural support. They can be frozen and thawed multiple times and still used for many of the same purposes, though cooked applications better mask the slight differences in texture. You could even freeze apples prepped for a pie, transfer them to a pie shell when ready to bake, then freeze the cooled pie until showtime (thaw the pie in the refrigerator overnight, then bake at 375°F for 10 to 15 minutes to refresh the pastry).
Baked Goods
Freezers are a baker’s best friend. Cookie dough contains far less ice-crystal-forming water than meat or fresh produce, and the lack of intact cells means there is less vulnerable infrastructure. Most doughs and fully baked items (like breads, cookies, cakes, and pies) survive freezing, thawing, and refreezing spectacularly well. While water is mostly locked in place during freezing, it can escape slowly over time, causing freezer burn. Keep all frozen foods in airtight containers, resealable freezer bags, or vacuum sealed bags (the best option, if you have the means) to prevent drying out during extended frozen storage.
Liquid Foods, Like Soups and Sauces
Most liquid foods like juices, purées, and soups can be thawed and refrozen multiple times without any significant impact on quality because most structures that could be compromised by ice crystals have already been obliterated by juicing, puréeing, and simmering.
However, high-fat emulsions (like mayonnaise and coconut milk), starch-thickened sauces (such as gravy), and gelatin-based mixtures (like Jell-O or panna cotta) rely on delicately balanced interactions between water, fat, carbs, and proteins. These foods don’t have delicate cells like fresh meat and produce, but they do contain fragile microscopic networks that can be damaged by ice crystals, so it’s best to avoid freezing them in the first place.
Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts
In most home freezers, your food is never completely frozen. Even at 0°F, some of the water in your food remains unfrozen, in the form of highly concentrated slushes of sugar and minerals. This semi-frozen water moves around like an invisible river, slowly altering substances that appear rock-hard. This applies to all frozen foods, but the effects on frozen desserts are especially noticeable. Smooth, silky ice cream will become gritty and icy over time as mobile, liquid water joins ice crystals and slowly grows them from imperceptible snowflakes to jagged icebergs large enough for our tongues to detect.
These effects are reversible, but unless you have an appetite for re-churning your ice cream, never let ice cream thaw and refreeze. If you want to be a real ice cream sicko, get a stand-alone chest freezer with no auto defrost cycle and open it as infrequently as possible.
Pantry Items
Food with very little water can actually benefit from time in a freezer. Everything slows down at frozen temperatures, including chemical reactions. Dried fruits, potato chips or crackers, whole grain flour, nuts and seeds, and anything else that might be prone to becoming rancid from oxidation will last much longer if stored in the freezer instead of in the pantry. The fact that these foods have less potential for forming destructive ice crystals means you can take them in and out of the freezer as often as you like.
