maven&meddler

For some time, I’ve been buying the bags of frozen, individually packaged fish at Costco. Halibut, Orange Roughy, Cod and such. It’s pretty good, but kind of expensive, some of it coming in at around $15 - 20 per bag which provides maybe eight to ten portions, depending on the type of fish.

Today, needing to restock the freezer - and we eat a LOT of fish around here at Rancho Maven, at least three nights a week - I wandered into Costco for more of same.

However, I was snooping around the fresh cooler and really, what I got was a screaming bargain, and all I had to do was spend perhaps twenty minutes once I got home wrapping the fillets for freezing.

I got, for example, a package of Dover Sole for about $8.00. I re-wrapped it into about five generous dinners for three, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap and then put into a labeled ziplock. You need to be sure to wrap the fish fillets rather flat, and then lay them flat into the ziplock to allow them to freeze quickly.

I fold and flip the fish fillets so each is individually wrapped  in the plastic wrap, so they can defrost quickly and come apart easily.

Since there are three of us here generally, I put about 12 to 16 ounces of fillets per package.

I also bought a package of Rockfish - that was about $11.00 and I made about four dinner packets of that. The package of True Pacific Cod was around $16.00 and that will feed about 5 adults on Saturday night, plus it gave me four large-ish dinner sized packets for the freezer. I cut the large cod fillets up to better portion them.

This is much more economical than the pre-packaged, individually wrapped fish in the freezer, and I’m better able to take control of the portion size.

I want to mention that this method of freezing isn’t the best for the long term. But I’m not buying for next year. As much fish as we eat, this will be gone in three to four weeks. I don’t recommend buying anything that you can’t consume in less than two months. No matter how well it’s packaged, freezing doesn’t do it a lot of good, plus you’re paying money in form of energy costs to store it. It’s also your money tied up in food that you’re not using.

Let Costco and others do that. I believe in quick turnover in my own refrigerator and pantry.