Homemade convenience foods are a great alternative to grocery stores. They save the housewife's time and allow you to feed the family a delicious dinner in a matter of minutes, while saving money.
Recipes for homemade semi-finished products can be very diverse, since everything that is offered by factory manufacturers can be prepared at home without much difficulty. This requires only a certain amount of time and a sufficient amount of free space in the freezer for subsequent storage. And if not so long ago under the general name "semi-finished products" were hidden products that have undergone primary processing, but need additional for subsequent use, today more and more often this word is called not only cutlets or dumplings familiar to everyone. The group of semi-finished products includes all those preparations that are stored in the freezer and allow the hostess to cook food in a shorter period of time than usual.
Meat semi-finished products
They are the most popular and include a variety of products that include meat. The most classic semi-finished product is dumplings. But pancakes with meat, pasties, cutlets, meatballs, cabbage rolls are no less tasty. The recipes for their preparation are no different from those used by the hostess for the usual cooking until the moment of its heat treatment, since the whole secret lies in the correct freezing and storage of ready-made semi-finished products. Therefore, before preparing semi-finished products, you need to think about what form of their subsequent storage in the freezer will be the most convenient. It is desirable to freeze them in small portions, since any product should be fried or scalded immediately, without preliminary defrosting. Therefore, dumplings are first frozen, laid out in one layer on a cutting board, sprinkled with flour or covered with a layer of cling film, and only then scattered into bags or containers. Cutlets or pancakes are easiest to freeze right away between two layers of cling film. With this approach, semi-finished products will retain their shape and never stick together.
Vegetable and fruit semi-finished products
Using fruits, you can prepare spring rolls, dumplings, compote mixtures. The former are frozen in the same way as semi-finished meat products, and for the latter, it is advisable to either immediately put the berries in small containers or bags, sufficient in size to prepare one portion, or freeze them on a cutting board. This method allows you to use berries in the future, including for baking pies or filling in dumplings or pancakes. Vegetable homemade semi-finished products are an excellent opportunity to preserve all vitamins and bring them to the table, regardless of the season. Cooking them is no less simple: just cut those vegetables that are usually used for cooking stews into pieces and freeze a similar mix in the freezer.
