IQF technique for storing herbs and pastes

IQF stands for Individual quick freezing – It is a common freezing method in the food industry. It is a technique of freezing individual pieces of food separately from the other pieces at low temperatures, so that they remain frozen but are separate and not stuck to each other.

This is a very common treatment in fruit and veegtable processing. With this method, you can have beautifully cut cubes, slices and shreds of food that are frozen and yet free flowing. You have probably used frozen cheese or paneer thats similar.

I try to use this technique to store masalas, curries or herb pastes, so that they don’t occupy too much space in my freezer! and stay individually frozen for easy use, without the need to thaw, every time to measure or portion the amount you need.

As an example, below is a procedure to make a green paste that I often store in my freezer. you can use this method to make ginger-garlic paste or any other mixtures that you use often in your cooking.

Frozen green paste:

• take the cleaned dried stalks and leaves of cilantro and grind them in a mixer without adding water as much as possible.
• You can also add another herb or garlic/ ginger/ green chillies to this mixture – depending on what combination you end up using more often.
• I like to make this with green chillies (especially the ones taht are also on the evrge of yellowing, to extend their use). Also green chiili+cilantro is a good mix to use any chutneys and also curries
• Spoon the ground mixture onto a greased silicon mat and stick it in the freezer immediately (you will need to make space in the freezer before hand)
• Use a teaspoon or tablespoon, if you want to be extra precise, and that way its already measured out, if you’re following a particular recipe.
• Here, I have used a tablespoon!

• In about half an hour-45 min, the blobs of green paste would have frozen, remove them from the mat into a ziploc bag and freeze immediately.
• This way it takes minimal space in your fridge and each blob is individually quick frozen!

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