Ice-trays for freezing

In my first post I recommended cooking and freezing food as the option for busy people who have no time to cook a decent meal on weekdays. So here are some more useful tips using the freezer.

The Ice-tray has more uses than just freezing water into ice-cubes (or whatever shapes they come in these days). If you have surplus limes, lemons or oranges or whatever citrus fruits, juice them and pour the juices into the ice-trays and when frozen, pop the iced juice cubes into zip-log bags or if you are like me, keep them in transparent plasticware and you can use them when you need them whether for a juicy drink or just some for your sambal belacan, or to make your lemon chicken. If you like ice lemon tea, you can pop one or two cubes of the frozen lemon ice into your tea and I am sure you will be able to come up with more innovative ideas to use them. You can do the same with coffee and tea too and when you want to drink ice coffee or tea instead of just popping ice into your beverage thus diluting it, you can use the coffee or tea ice cubes and while they chill your beverage it will add the same flavour to your drink without diluting it.

The same can be done with your coconut milk (santan) instead of using packed santan powder or santan in cartons coz these will somehow contain some preservatives. It's so easy to buy ready squeezed santan in the wet markets or even in the supermakets. They are sold for approximately RM1/= per packet. Frozen santan cubes can be just dropped into boiling curry without even having to thaw it first. Invaluable because it saves time and santan is not something that keeps well so the only was is to freeze it.

I have heard that even brandy and whisky can be made into ice cubes but I can't attest to it as I have yet to try it. That would be great in your drinks if it freezes well don't you think. I will test it out and let you know how it turned out later. In the meantime, go crazy with the citrus juices, coffee and tea and coconut milk. These have been tried and tested.