What do you gain by portioning meat and chicken as soon as you buy it?

Dividing meat and chicken into meal-sized pieces and freezing them as soon as you get back from the market lets you thaw only as much as each later meal needs. For meat frozen whole there is no such option: the whole package has to be thawed for a single dish, and thawed meat cannot be frozen again.

Why does meat frozen whole cause trouble?

A kilo of ground meat that goes into the freezer as it is, is a single piece. When you want to make köfte (Turkish meatballs) for one evening from that ground meat, you have to thaw the whole package; refreezing what is left is not an option, because food that has been thawed once should not be frozen again.

That leaves two paths: either a second dish is made with the remaining meat within the same week, or it is thrown out. Portioning removes this dilemma from the start; the size of the package is what decides how much gets thawed.

The same problem is even clearer with chicken. When a whole chicken goes into the freezer as it is, someone who wants to use only the breast has to thaw the entire bird; cut into pieces and packed separately, the same chicken turns into several meals independent of one another.

Why right away?

Perishable meat, chicken and fish are best bought at the end of the shopping trip and placed in the refrigerator without breaking the cold chain, within two hours at most, or within one hour at most in hot weather. That period does not end when you get home; the minutes the bag sits on the counter are part of the same time.

Leaving the portioning for later usually means spending that time. Dividing the meat as soon as you buy it finishes two jobs at once: the meat gets into the cold sooner, and it does not have to be handled again.

How do you divide the portions?

Foods to be frozen are best divided into portions according to the family's daily and per-meal needs and packed that way; the measure is not the number of people but the amount that actually gets cooked in one meal in that home. Making four-portion packages in a two-person home brings the same problem back in a smaller form.

Packing is done so that no air gets in; this holds even if the food will be used within a short time. Laying the pieces out flat and thin helps too, because a thin package freezes faster and keeps you waiting less while it thaws.

The type of food and the date of freezing are written on every package. An unlabeled package becomes unrecognizable within a few weeks; most of the loss in a freezer comes not from spoilage but from the package of unknown contents being left for last.

What changes when you thaw it?

Raw meat is best thawed in the refrigerator, in an environment of around four degrees, and the process is best completed within forty-eight hours at most; frozen foods are not thawed at room temperature. The meal-sized package has the advantage here too: a small package thaws in the fridge overnight, while a large one needs two days.

When you are in a hurry, cold water is used rather than the counter; the meat is kept in a food-grade bag so that it does not touch the water, and the water is changed every half hour. This method also works with a small package, not with a whole piece.

What can you do today?

At your next meat shop, you can divide the meat into meal-sized pieces and make flat packages as soon as you open the bag; keeping a pen and label tape next to the freezer brings this step down to a few seconds.

Flattening ground meat inside the bag and marking off sections with the back of a knife works too: once it is frozen, it lets you break off just as much as that meal needs. And putting the packages you will use soonest at the front of the freezer sets the order by itself.

If you do not know how much one meal comes to, you can weigh it once the first time and take that amount as your measure; even by eye, the later packages come out close to the same size. If some of the packages feel too large after a week the measure gets smaller, and if you are constantly thawing two packages it gets bigger.