Food Storage: What Not to do with Meat in Your Freezer

(Did I capitalize that title correctly? I have no idea...)

I tend to buy most of our meats in family packs. Mass quantities of meat, yes, but cheaper in the long run and I know I'll eventually cook it all.

Last time I bought a large pack of chicken breasts, I cleaned/trimmed them all, filleted them (because honestly a whole chicken breast is too much for Dan and I each to eat and thinner meat cooks faster), and then froze them in freezer bags. It made for much easier cooking–just defrost and use, no trimming required.

A few weeks ago chicken breasts were on sale, so I bought a family pack which I soon cleaned, trimmed, and froze. Brilliant me thought it would be a great idea to freeze my chicken breasts in tupperware separated by two sheets of wax paper rather than using ziploc bags. Personally, I hate throwing away ziploc bags. Each time I do throw one away I (a) know it will take a very long time to biodegrade, and (b) know I will have to pay money to replace it. I usually wash ziploc bags now and reuse them until they can't be reused any more or Dan gets to them first and throws them out. (Arrgh!) And I always question myself a little about reusing a ziploc bag that had raw meat in it, before washing it and reusing it anyway.. So, back to my brilliant decision: Tupperware! This way I can just stick the tub in the dishwasher when I've used all the meat and not worry about cleanliness, etc. Bad idea.

Today I tried to remove a few chicken breasts from said tupperware tub only to find that in spite of all the wax paper layers separating each breast, they were all stuck together in tub-form. Aaaaahhh! So not cool. I had to use a knife to get the first breast out and wound up puncturing both myself and the tub in the process. And then I had to let it sit out for 20 minutes before I could manage to get any more breasts out with a knife (more carefully this time.) Alas, I'll have to go back to ziploc bags. Lesson learned. :(