Italian Traditional Food

Home freezers are a convenience

Home freezers bring a new dimension to cooking, and domestic models come in all sizes and shapes. But freezers are not just for farmer's wives with plenty of surplus produce to spare; they are a wonderful aid to everyone who cooks. Home-made sauces, pies, srews, pates, breadcrumbs, bread, cakes, soup, stock, puddings, ice-cream - all can be frozen successfully.

Types of home freezers

There are two main types of freezer - upright, with a door opening like a conventional refrigerator, and chest-type, with a top-opening lid. Some are combined with a refrigerator in one cabinet. Sizes range from those giving about 1 cubic foot of storage space to large commercial types of 16 cubic feet or more.

When buying a freezer bear in mind that, as with refrigerators, the cost per cubic foot reduces as the size increases. Few people would find less than 4 cubic feet adequate, although a town flat or weekend cottage freezer, needed just for holding small quantities of commercially frozen food, could be smaller. Some people who have a lot of spare produce hire lockers at a deep-freeze plant and keep a smaller freezer at home. Reckon on storing about 25 lb of food per cubic foot (or 30 lb if it is in commercial packs); it is possible to freeze up to 2 1/2 lb of food per cubic foot of storage space every 24 hours.

The compressor motor in a freezer works much harder than in a refrigerator, so it is important to buy a freezer from a reputable firm that is likely to stay in business a long time. Check, too, that there are good servicing facilities, because if anything goes wrong your freezer will need servicing in a hurry.

The basic cost of competing home freezers is much the same. Features which add to the cost include;: locks; a device to show that the temperature inside the cabinet has risen; separately refrigerated pull-out drawers; door shelves on upright models; work tops on chest-type freezers; a "super-cold" switch setting for extra fast freezing.

The cost of owning

A life of ten years is a reasonable minimum for a freezer, so divide the purchase price by ten to work out the annual capital cost. The running cost will depend on the local rate for electricity, but it can be calculated at approximately 1 1/2 units of electricity per cubic foot per week. Allow, too, for an annual servicing charge.

In the unlikely event of a power failure, or other calamity, cutting off the electricity for more than 12 hours, you may run the risk of losing the contents of your freezer. It takes 12-24 hours for food in an unopened freezer to thaw. You can insure the contents of your freezer against power failure. The cost varies with individual insurance companiies, but most companies will treat the insurance of your freezer as a normal extention to a householder's policy.

Quite apart from the cost advantages of being able to freeze your own home-made dishes, it is possible to buy commercially-frozen food in bulk quantities that show quite a saving over retail prices. A number of firms now offer a deliver-to-the-door service in refrigerated vans with a range of meat, fish and vegetables and prepared dishes too.

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