Flatten Your Mince Before You Freeze It

For anyone who freezes their mince meat, this hack’s going to make your life easy. Here’s what you need to know.

When it comes time to defrosting your mince, there are a number of methods and not all of them are quick and convenient. A simple meat packing technique might be a little revolutionary and Reddit is letting everyone in on the secret.

When I buy mince, it’s usually pre-packaged and out of sheer laziness, I just slam it straight into the freezer for another day’s problem. When it’s finally ready to be used, I pop a few holes in it and defrost it in my microwave until it’s ready for the saucepan or wok. The problem with this low-key laziness is that my meat defrosts unevenly and the microwave partially cooks parts of it.

Now before we get into it, you might think defrosting the night before would be the ‘smarter’ idea. But for a last-minute cook, that’s not really possible.

Reddit user u/corvettemikes has posted a simple hack to fix this problem as well as reduce the space mince takes up.

They suggest getting a re-sealable zipper storage bag and popping the cold — not frozen — mince into it. Then roll it out until it’s flat and pop it into the freezer like that. This means your slabs of frozen mince will take up less space but more importantly, they’ll be easier to defrost on a pan or, if you insist, a microwave.

Now my pasta sauces will taste less microwave-y, hopefully.

This article has been updated since its original publication.