Quick Answer: Can boiled dumplings be frozen?

Dumplings are a popular dish of Slavic cuisine, which is made from unleavened dough, which allows you to use any filling for it. In recent years, convenience foods have become very popular. Their quality has noticeably improved, as a result of which there is no need to manufacture them yourself. This significantly saves time and effort. But whether they are bought in a store or made independently is not so important. In any case, the question arises for how long and how to properly store dumplings in the freezer.

How to make lean dough for dumplings

Ingredients:

Flour - 5 cups
Salt - 1 teaspoon
Vegetable oil - 50 ml.
Boiling water - 300 ml.

Cooking method:

1. Sift the flour, pour boiling water into the bowl of the bread machine, and pour 50 ml there. vegetable oil, it should be odorless, add salt and then flour.

Tip: If you knead by hand, first mix the flour with salt, then add boiling water, butter and leave for 5 minutes to cool, then knead.

2. Set the “Dough” mode, when ready, leave it in the bread maker for 30 minutes so that it can rest. If you do this with your hands, you can put it in a bag and let it brew as well.

3. Sprinkle the board with a small amount of flour and knead with your hands. We form rounds, add filling and close the edges.

Such products can be boiled immediately, or can be frozen for a cooking time convenient for you. Bon appetit.

How and how much to store

The storage conditions for dumplings are to keep them constantly cold until they are consumed. At the same time, dumplings should be stored in the freezer at the following temperatures no more than:

temperature -12°C - -10°C for not 30 days;
at -18°C and below no more than 4 months in a cardboard box, and up to 6 months in plastic factory packaging.

Note! Semi-finished flour products are capable of absorbing surrounding odors, so they must be packaged hermetically.

How to choose

Among the wide variety of dumplings, you need to choose a high-quality semi-finished product so that you don’t regret your purchase later.

It is best to purchase a factory-packaged product.

Firstly, it is hygienic, since the entire production process in modern enterprises occurs with virtually no human intervention.
And secondly, you can always find out who produced the product and where. And also see its composition, determine the degree of freshness and shelf life, in contrast to loose semi-finished products.

It should be understood that a fresh product is a semi-finished product, the release date of which is as close as possible to the time of purchase.

A high-quality flour product cannot contain additives with unclear names. The packaging of such products should only indicate flour, eggs (can be replaced with egg powder), water, salt, sugar, vanillin, and filling ingredients.

The color of the dough should be light, closer to white. Yellow and grayish shades indicate the presence of preservative additives, or storage for too long.

Packaged dumplings must be the same size and have smooth edges. They should not be stuck together or deformed. This will be a clear sign that they have already been defrosted.

Dumpling dough on kefir with dill

What to take:

flour - 2 cups;
kefir (any fat content will do) – 1 cup;
medium-sized egg - 1 pc.;
soda – 1 tsp;
salt – 0.25 tsp;
fresh dill - 0.5 medium bunch.

Let's prepare step by step:

Beat the egg into a bowl convenient for kneading and add a small pinch of salt. Beat with a fork until the ingredients are combined.
Remove the kefir from the refrigerator in advance so that it is not cold before adding. You can use slightly expired kefir; the fat content is also not of fundamental importance.
Finely chop the washed and dried dill with a knife. Then place in a bowl with the kefir mixture.
Sift the flour and add to the dough in small, approximately equal portions.
When approximately half of the total amount of flour has been added, add soda. Mix well.
Add the rest of the flour and knead into a moderately firm dough. Collect it into a ball and leave it under a cloth for a while (20-25 minutes will be enough).
Knead the resting dough a little more, and then divide it into pieces, and you can move on to the modeling stage.

This time I had dumplings with the most common minced meat - pork + beef + a lot of onions. You can also use this miracle dough to make dumplings with any savory filling.

Universal recipe for dough in a bread machine

List of ingredients:

flour – 450 g;
water (room temperature) – 210 ml;
egg – 1 pc.;
salt – 0.5 tsp.

How to do it at home:

Sift the flour and pour it into a bread bucket.
Put salt there, beat in the egg and pour out the water.
Close the device and start the “Dumpling Dough” program.
Wait until the end of the work cycle (20 minutes) and leave the dough in the switched off bread machine under the lid for 1 hour.

If you want to get a stiffer consistency so that the products are guaranteed not to boil over, you can manually mix in a little more flour. The fact is that if the specified proportions of liquid and bulk ingredients are violated, the bread machine motor may not withstand the load.

In a refrigerator

You can store dumplings in the refrigerator, but only after they have already been cooked. In other cases, semi-finished products should be in the freezer.

You can keep the finished dish on the refrigerator shelf for no longer than 2 days in a sealed container.

The storage temperature of ready-made dumplings should not exceed +3°C - +4°C. If you store a semi-finished product in such conditions, it will lose quality after a day. After this, the product should be cooked or frozen.

Proper freezing

If there were too many dumplings by accident, or they were put together in large quantities for storage purposes, they will need to be frozen in any case.

But so that your efforts are not in vain and the product does not stick together into one lump, you should follow simple freezing rules.

A cutting board or tray of a suitable size is covered with a plastic bag (or simply covered).
Then the dumplings are placed so that they do not touch each other and placed in the freezer for 2 hours.
After this, the semi-finished products are taken out of the freezer and carefully distributed into freezer bags.
The remaining air is removed from the bags as much as possible and sealed tightly.
After this, the bags are placed in the freezer for long-term storage. If semi-finished products are placed as compactly as possible, they will not take up much space in the freezer.

Semi-finished products are frozen in portions. The number of dumplings in the package should not be more than needed for consumption at one time. It should be taken into account that repeated freezing of any semi-finished products is unacceptable.

Frozen

How long dumplings can be stored in the freezer will depend on the storage temperature and the composition of the product.

The optimal storage temperature for semi-finished flour products is considered to be below -18°C. Under such conditions, the hermetically packaged product can be stored for up to 3-6 months.
It is better not to store loose processed products or products in an unsealed bag for more than 1 month.
At -12°C, the shelf life of dumplings in the freezer is reduced to only 1 month (sealed packaged), and to 2 - 3 weeks (opened, hanging).
Semi-finished products with preservatives can be stored for up to 6 months at -18°C.

Thus, the maximum shelf life of dumplings in the freezer cannot exceed half a year, even if preservatives are used in the manufacture of semi-finished products.

Without refrigerator

Flour products with vegetable or berry filling can be kept warm for up to 6 hours.

If the filling contains perishable products (cottage cheese, meat, seafood), the storage time of dumplings without refrigeration is reduced to 3 - 4 hours. To prevent their surface from becoming dry and weathered, the top of the product should be covered with a cotton cloth. A disposable paper towel will not work for this.

Advice! To prevent the dumplings from sticking to the cutting board, on which they are usually laid after modeling, it should first be lightly sprinkled with flour.

Water-based dough for dumplings with potatoes, cabbage, cherries, cottage cheese

Also great for making dumplings and tolerates freezing well.

Required:

premium flour (wheat) - 600 g;
drinking cold water - 250-300 ml;
egg (category C0) - 1 pc.;
salt - 0.5 tsp;
deodorized vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. l.

Cooking method:

Sift the flour into a deep and wide container (all at once). Make a small depression right at the top and pour salt into it.
Then beat the egg in there, and then pour in the oil.
Holding a spoon in one hand, begin to mix the ingredients, and with the other hand, gradually pour in water. You may not need all the water, so you should add it in small portions, checking the consistency of the mixture.
When it becomes difficult to stir with a spoon, switch to manual kneading. As soon as the dough becomes homogeneous, cover it with film or a damp towel and leave to “rest” for half an hour.
Then transfer it to a hard work surface (no need to add more flour!) and knead it vigorously.

As a result, it will become smooth, delicate, and very pleasant to work with. The dumplings made from it turn out to be incomparable. I prepare a double portion at once and freeze a lot “in reserve.” Dumplings with berries are also delicious. The shell is strong enough to keep all the juices from the filling inside.