Freezer Favorites

• Fried French fries and onion rings are the vegetables best suited for freezing. Other vegetables tend to lose their crispness or their breading becomes soggy as a result of defrosted ice crystals when you try to heat up the food later. You might have some success with fried mushrooms and okra, but don't expect them to retain the same texture and flavor as when fresh from the fryer. Fried vegetables such as zucchini and squash become too soggy to be worth the effort of freezing.

Crystal Control

• Ice crystal formation is the main reason most vegetables don't freeze well, so you can increase the success rate if you decrease the number of ice crystals. The best way to do this is to freeze the vegetables as quickly as possible. In restaurants, this is achieve through flash freezing in a subzero freezer. Foods freeze fastest in your home freezer if you place them against the freezer walls for about 24 hours. You can move them elsewhere in the freezer after they have frozen solid.

Proper Packaging

• Despite the general success of freezing fried potatoes and onions, they're not going to taste good if the foods are freezer burnt. Foods acquire freezer burn as a result of exposure to air and ice crystal formation. Freeze vegetables in freezer bags of vacuum-sealed bags rather than all-purpose storage bags. Freezer bags are better insulated to protect frozen foods. Removing as much air as possible from the bags before sealing them reduces the chances of freezer burn, which makes vacuum sealers particularly attractive if you plan to store large quantities of frozen deep-fried foods.

Cooking the Frozen Vegetables

• The best way to cook frozen fried vegetables while retaining the original crunch and flavor is to deep fry them a second time. This cooks them quickly and helps evaporate some of the moisture so that it doesn't create steam, which causes breading to fall off. Preheat the oil before removing the frozen vegetables from the freezer; transfer the vegetables to the fryer immediately after removing them from cold storage. The vegetables should only require 1 or 2 minutes in the fryer, because they're previously cooked. With this method, you might even achieve sufficient results with fried mushrooms and okra, in addition to fries and onion rings.