Can You Freeze Spaghetti? Most stuff can be frozen. But does that also count for spaghetti. If i were you, i would read this before trying.
Spaghetti: A Variant of Pasta
While people are hustling with their jobs and busy schedule, they still want to eat a tasty meal. After coming back from home, we all really wish dinner was ready if we snapped our fingers. There is when the idea of meal prepping and storing them comes.
Pasta is that one dish that anyone would be up for. It will be a tough call to find someone who does not like pasta. Foodies are a big fan of various kinds of pasta. Besides that, there are a bunch of people who are fitness enthusiasts but still want to devour the goodness of pasta. Like many other variants of pasta, spaghetti is one staple. This traditional dish has the hearts of many.
Spaghetti is one of the many variants of pasta. It is long and thin pasta often known as noodle pasta. Spaghetti is not like egg noodles, it is a rather premium version of noodles. It is made of durum wheat semolina. This wheat is milled and later kneaded with water, occasionally some more nutrients are added to the dough.
Coming to the nutritional benefits of spaghetti, it is needless to say that spaghetti is filled with carbohydrate. It also has some other nutrients like protein, Vitamin B, iron, and potassium. However, when spaghetti is cooked, various ingredients are used which makes it so much more nutritious and most definitely, delicious!
Spaghetti is made in two type-dried spaghetti and fresh spaghetti. The only difference between the two is, freshly made spaghetti is made when we want to cook it within few hours of making it. On the other hand, dried spaghetti is manufactured and processed for later purposes. That is, what we typically find on the shelves of the grocery store is the Dried Spaghetti and what we see gourmet chefs or spaghetti craftsmen make for premium uses is Fresh Spaghetti.
In today’s world where we rely on machine-made food ingredients, spaghetti and other variants of Pasta are also handmade. There are quite some places worldwide where people are interested in taking lessons in making pasta. Of all these courses being taken by people worldwide, we have some brilliant spaghetti craftsmen.
Spaghetti has a bunch of substitutes namely fettuccine pasta, Angel hair pasta, Linguine, vermicelli, lasagna sheets etc. All of these belong to Ribbon pasta. Spaghetti itself has a thinner and thicker version- they are Spaghettoni, the thicker form, and Capellini, the thinner form.
How is Spaghetti Cooked?
Starting from thinking about a fancy dish to a quick meal, the name that pops in our head is surely spaghetti. Spaghetti can be cooked in different ways. Depending on how you want to eat it, you can cook it.
Heavy tomato sauce, pesto, olive oil, carbonara- these are the common types of bases used for preparing spaghetti. In addition, various herbs like oregano, basil, thyme, different meat, and vegetables are included to make the dish tastier. These are popular sauces used in Italy and their particular cuisine. However, in the US, Bolognese sauces and other bases are used to make it suited to their palates.
Storing Spaghetti:
Stored dried spaghetti is no big deal. They have a shelf life of one to two years as they are processed for storing in room temperature.
But the query is when we don’t know if cooked spaghetti can be stored in the refrigerator or in the freezer. The answer is, yes! We can freeze cooked spaghetti, be it just boiled and ready to be combined with sauce or absolutely cooked with the base.
How to Freeze Spaghetti?
Cooked without sauce:
• Cook the spaghetti to al-dente. That is, make sure it can be broken when bitten. Cooking is for 8 minutes will make it al-dente.
• After that, quickly rinse it off with cold water. This water bath helps to stops the cooking process, as the heat from the spaghetti might also cook it further.
• Finally, add in a dash of olive oil and give it a gentle stir. This will prevent the spaghetti from sticking to each other.
• You can transfer it to a zip lock bag and make sure it is airtight.
Some people also using baking sheets to separate strands of spaghetti and freeze them for few hours. Once the spaghetti is frozen, it is transferred to an airtight container.
Cooked with sauce:
• Once the pasta is cooked with sauce, make sure to have it in room temperature.
• Transfer it to a freezer-friendly container after it cooled down
• Make sure to have it in an airtight container.
Defrost and Serve:
To defrost the cooked spaghetti, put the container in a warm water tub and let it rest. After that, transfer the pasta from the container to a pot of boiling water. This will cook the al-dente spaghetti completely within a minute or two. Hence, your spaghetti will be ready to cook further.
In the case of spaghetti cooked with sauce, you just need to take the container out of the freezer and leave it in the fridge to thaw. Later, you can put it in the ovenproof dish and heat it. You can also heat it up in a skillet; make sure to control the temperature of your stove.
This way, you can thaw your spaghetti and serve it.
Bottom Line
Originating from Italy, Spaghetti has made its name across the world. A lot of us enjoy having spaghetti on special occasions or even daily. Spaghetti is such an easy but tasty dish to prepare for our meals. While coping with the daily struggles, we are sure you do not want to spend extra hours in the kitchen on daily basis. So just find some time in a week where you can cook and store the meals for weekly or monthly uses. We hope our guide helped you with freezing spaghetti for further uses.
