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Sometimes my fridge is set to be too cold and if there is not much in it, I find the vegies in the back of the crisper start to freeze. This week it happened to mushrooms, bok choy, and radishes.

I tried to "recover" them a bit by letting them sit in warm water for 5-10 minutes before chopping up for a stirfry or pasta sauce (i.e. not heaps of cooking time). (Although not the mushrooms - I have some idea you're not supposed to wash mushrooms because they go slimy, although soaking might be different.)

The mushrooms were OK even though frozen...but the radishes were horrible. They still had heaps of ice crystals inside, and even some I cooked, I thought the ice would melt and they would be OK, but somehow they were unnaturally crunchy and it was quite unpleasant to eat them.

So is there anything else I should try in this case, or is prevention the only answer?

(And yes I turned up the temperature on the fridge ;))

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  • There are fridges that work with forced air movement to prevent it, these are rare as domestic units yet but have been available from restaurant suppliers for ages ... unfortunately, less energy efficient.
    – rackandboneman
    Apr 25, 2017 at 17:36

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I'm sorry to say this, but I think prevention is the best answer. Once you're vegetables freeze things happen at the cellular level that changes the nature of the vegetables. For example, ice crystals pierce cell walls which destroys some of the structure, which is responsible for the crispness and crunch of the vegetable. I don't think there is really a way to "fix" this, once it happens.

That said, cooking does something similar to vegetables. Cooking destroys cell walls, which is why cooked carrots are so much softer than raw carrots. I would think that vegetables that stand up to cooking would survive freezing the best (such as your mushrooms). On the other hand, somthing like lettuce is a lost cause, once frozen.

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  • I think you might be right. Sadly. :(
    – pfctdayelise
    Aug 5, 2011 at 5:36
  • I agree, you cannot recover frozen veges... The trick seems to be to do something with them that doesn't depend on the crispness anymore... Carrots can become carrot cake, zucchini make great pasta sauce, bananas (why you'd have bananas in the fridge I would not know, but I once ended up with a whole hand of them in the fridge) becomes great banana bread. Lettuce once became an acceptable lettuce and peas soup.
    – Adrian Hum
    Nov 3, 2015 at 22:35

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