It takes only minutes each morning to whip up a sandwich, yet when you add the lunch packing job to everything else you have to do each morning, sometimes it just feels easier to buy lunch!
While you can freeze sandwiches for up to two months, we find it’s manageable to freeze one week’s worth of sandwiches at a time. In the morning, it’s “grab and go!”
Keep these quick tips in mind.
- If you like mayo on your sandwich, we found that Miracle Whip freezes better. It doesn’t get grainy when it thaws like mayonnaise can.
- Never freeze lettuce, pickles, tomatoes or other veggie toppings. Pack them separately just like you would for a freshly-made sandwich.
- Freezing works best for basic lunch meat and cheese sandwiches, or things like tuna salad or ham salad.
- Yes you can freeze peanut butter and jelly!
You need not shop in the freezer section of your grocery store for fresh tasting pre-made PB & J; it is so easy to freeze them at home. The tip: spread BOTH sides of the bread with peanut butter, and put the jelly in the middle.
Benefits (and downsides) to freezing
- It is great for using up leftovers, and to add variety! If you buy several different things and want to enjoy them spaced out over a week or 2, you can freeze 3 or 4 varieties of sandwiches and then just pull out what you are in the mood for each day.
- Unfortunately, you do need to use plastic wrap and ziplock bags. But, it often allows you to re-purpose leftovers, so you do save money. We use the “nested” approach: we wrap the sandwiches in plastic wrap and place them in a freezer bag. When we go to make another batch, we can re-use the freezer bag.
- You can place your frozen sandwich in your lunch container in the morning. It will thaw by lunchtime and double as an extra ice pack for other items. *We always use a regular ice-pack too. Better safe than sorry!
- You can make it more fun. When you are getting everything out to make sandwiches in bulk, you’ll find yourself feeling more energized and creative than when dashing a singleton sandwich together in the morning. For some added variety, use cookie cutters to make sandwiches appropriate for the season … or mix up the bread and use whole wheat cinnamon raisin swirl instead of your regular wheat for a change of pace.
Tags: freeze, sandwiches
More about Amy and Scott Dawson, creators of Lunchtaker.com: One of our core focuses is on nutrition and fitness. Our children both attended a parent cooperative pre-school where the morning snack was as healthy as possible, and our family liked the opportunities for new foods that arose in pre-school. As our children go through grade school, we are focusing on continuing the trend of ensuring we feed ourselves a variety of foods, all good for our bodies... read more...
Posted Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 10:41 am and filed under Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I don’t use plastic wrap. I have a cloth wrap type thing- like a wrap-n-mat (http://www.wrapnmat.com/). I just throw it in the freezer. But sometimes they get a little freezer tasting so I might put all the sammies in a plastic bag in the freezer and reuse it.