Freezing sauces: All information for different types of sauces

Can you freeze sauce? This question arises when there are leftovers after a (celebratory) meal or when you want to prepare a larger portion to store. With our information, you will know exactly which sauces freeze well and what you should bear in mind.

The good news is that many sauces can be frozen, in fact most of them. We differentiate between different types of sauces based on the basic ingredients: vegetable sauce, cream sauce, flour sauce, roast sauce or meat sauce such as our best Bolognese. Check out our tips for freezing sauces. This way you can easily preserve leftovers for several months.

Which sauces can be frozen?

Whether and how well sauce can be frozen depends primarily on the base ingredient. We differentiate between the following 5 types of sauce.

These sauces can be easily frozen:

• Sauce with vegetables such as tomato sauce can be frozen for about 6 months without any problem. An alternative is to preserve tomato sauce by boiling it down.
• Gravy or minced meat sauces can also be stored in the freezer for up to 4 months. For a gravy that contains a lot of starch, please see the information for flour sauces. A little starch to bind it does not affect freezing.
• Sauces with cream such as our creamy mushroom cream sauce can be kept in the freezer for up to 3 months. Even if they are a bit chunky at first, they can be stirred into a creamy consistency when thawed. This also applies to sauces made with plant-based cream.

These sauces can only be frozen to a limited extent:

• Flour-based sauces Such as béchamel or dill sauce are not ideal for freezing: after defrosting, they become chunky and solid instead of remaining creamy. The taste is less affected by this than the appearance. Our tip: add a little more liquid (water, milk or vegetable stock) when defrosting, this often means that frozen flour sauces can still be saved.
• Fat-based sauces such as cheese sauce, butter sauce or hollandaise sauce can change their consistency after freezing and are therefore less ideal for freezing.

Freezing sauces: 6 tips

1. temperature: In general, we recommend letting all sauces cool to room temperature before freezing to save energy.
2. Freshness: Sauce is best frozen freshly cooked for the longest possible shelf life.
3. Portioning: It is best to freeze the food in the right portion size straight away.
4. container: Make sure that the container is labeled as suitable for freezing. Various materials are possible, such as plastic, glass, silicone, freezer bags or ice cube trays.
5. Label Don’t forget, so that a few months later you still know what’s in it and when the frozen food was made.
6. Heat: Ideally, frozen food should be thawed slowly in the refrigerator or at room temperature. It can be thawed more quickly at low heat in a pot with a lid.

Freezing sauces: Pinterest flyer for saving