How do I freeze milk, cheese and dairy?

Dairy divides sharply into things that come out of the freezer more or less unchanged and things that come out grainy. The dividing line is fat content and structure.

Safety

Step by step

1. Freeze milk with room to expand.Pour a little out of a full bottle first — it expands and can split the container. It keeps about three months and separates on thawing, which shaking fixes.
2. Defrost milk in the fridge and shake it.24 to 48 hours for a large bottle. It looks separated and slightly yellow at first; shaking brings it back. It is best used for cooking, cereal and hot drinks rather than drunk cold.
3. Freeze butter without hesitation.It freezes better than almost anything — up to a year, wrapped well. Grate it straight from frozen for pastry, which works very well.
4. Freeze hard cheese grated.Cheddar, parmesan and similar freeze well and are far more useful grated, since it goes straight from freezer to pan. Whole blocks become crumbly and hard to slice.
5. Do not freeze soft cheese.Brie, mozzarella, cottage cheese, cream cheese and ricotta separate into a grainy, watery mess. They remain safe but the texture does not recover.
6. Freeze double cream, not single.Cream above roughly 35% fat freezes acceptably. Single cream and half-fat versions split. Whipped cream freezes better than liquid — pipe rosettes onto a tray and bag them.
7. Expect yoghurt and custard to separate.Both split on thawing. Fine stirred into a cooked dish or a smoothie, unpleasant eaten as they are.
8. Freeze in usable portions.Cream in an ice cube tray, milk in the amount you use at once. Defrosting a litre to use 100ml wastes most of it.
9. Wrap tightly and exclude air.Dairy absorbs freezer odours readily and burns easily. Double-wrap cheese, and press air out of bags.
10. Label with the date.Milk three months, butter a year, hard cheese six months, cream three months. Frozen dairy is safe far longer than it is good.
11. Use anything separated in cooking.Split cream in a sauce, grainy yoghurt in a marinade or a cake, defrosted milk in baking. Nothing is wasted — it just moves from eating raw to cooking.
12. Freeze before the date, not on it.Freezing pauses deterioration; it does not reverse it. Something frozen on its use-by date has no shelf life once defrosted.

Tips

• Grate hard cheese before freezing. Frozen blocks are crumbly; frozen grated cheese goes straight into cooking.
• Frozen butter grated into pastry is easier than rubbing in cold butter by hand.
• Anything that separates is still fine for cooking. Do not throw it away — redirect it.

Common mistakes

• Freezing a completely full bottle of milk — It expands as it freezes and can split the container or force the cap off, leaving a mess through the freezer.
• Freezing soft cheese expecting it to recover — The emulsion breaks and the water separates out. It stays safe but the texture is grainy and watery and does not come back.

If it doesn't work