If I make too much cheese filling for a batch of stuffed shells, can I freeze the rest?

I have frozen cottage cheese with only marginal success. It tasted OK but the texture was weird…very watery. It can’t hurt to try. I just removed a little from the top of the container to allow for expansion and popped it in the freezer.

Texture will no doubt change.

Though it can’t be worse then this dairy free cheese I had the other on stuffed zucchini. It was the first time trying it. It looked like plastic and didn’t melt properly.

Regardless of that the poking and prodding of it. The taste of rice flour everyone asked for a piece with the cheese and when they went for seconds they stayed with it, including me though as I was helping myself I was wondering why.

Says something about our perception of food, doesn’t it?

Can you just make extra stuffed shells and freeze them instead? I would expect your results to be better in that case.

10 thumbs down, no cheese freeze, the chemistry just doesn’t blend.

Thanks for all comments.

If it makes any difference, this will be a blend of ricotta, shredded Monterey jack, shredded parmesan, and mozzarella, with a dash of sour cream thrown in (and some parsley).

A few weeks ago, I made a similar mixture to stuff some manicotti. It was my first time. I could see that the recipe wasn’t going to fill more than half of the pasta, so I increased it, and it was still light by the time I got through. This time I want to make sure I have enough, but because I don’t know what the relative quantities ought to be, I’m inclined to go for too much rather than too little. Hence the question.

@CWOTUS, are you saying that the cheese ought to freeze differently inside the shells from the way it would in a container? Or do you mean after baking? The question has to do with having more than will fit in the shells.

I have done this while making manicotti. Just ricotta and mozzarella and it ended badly. The mixture was screwed.

I have also frozen manicotti and that was fine after nuking it for a few minutes.

I assume that thawing it at room temperature to stuff more shells made it go bad. Or maybe it being baked in maniccotti before freezing helped preserve it.

My advice is to keep the mix in the fridge until tomorrow and use the rest and freeze what extra manicotti you can make.

A better way to use the extra cheese filling would be to stuff some extra shells, or manicotti, cook it and then freeze to be thawed and eaten at a later date. I think the cooking will add to the freezability (I think that’s a word!).

Bon appetit!

I sometimes make double batches of lasagna with a similar cheese mixture (minus the sour cream), and I freeze one of them uncooked. There’s never been a problem with it when I thaw (in the refrigerator) and cook that one later, so I can’t see why it wouldn’t be okay to freeze the cheese mixture alone.

The worst that could happen would be that when you thaw it for the next use that the mixture will be a little more watery.

However, adding some bread crumbs or corn starch or rice flour (or even a beaten egg) to get it cohesive again while cooking should straighten that out.

After all, it freezes just fine if in the shells. I suspect that because its smaller amounts, the excess moisture is absorbed by each shell as it cooks.

When its all in one larger mass, the water separating out from thawing is much more noticeable.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Are you draining your Ricotta cheese prior to making the entire batch to begin with?

If not, that will help enormously. And I have found that total moisture content per tub of Ricotta varies quite significantly from one brand to the next. You need to try several different brands to determine which one will freeze best.

I learned from my mom that preparing all the way until ready to go in the oven, then freezing, works with manicotti and with cheese enchiladas, and blintzes, too. But make sure you are using a well sealed container to keep out any freezer damage.

I would think that it would end up separating out, get a real watery top and then the cheese might go ‘grainy’. I’ve never done this particular mix, but I have seen cheesy dinners frozen and it wasn’t good.

Lots of great advice! Thank you all for the Voice of Experience.

This project is for this afternoon, for tonight’s dinner, so I haven’t done it yet. I’ll be writing down what I do so I’ll know what to change next time.

@Buttonstc, one of the recipes I consulted did say to drain the ricotta, but when I did this for the manicotti, I couldn’t see how there was anything to drain. It was a semisolid mass like custard yogurt or peanut butter—thick but spreadable, with no evidence of excess liquid. So I just put it all in. What should I have done? I’d never used ricotta before: my lasagne is always made with cottage cheese. Am I supposed to squeeze it somehow?

I don’t drain it. Like you noticed I don’t see anything to drain.

After-action report:

• One 12-oz. box of Barilla jumbo shells contained 39 shells, one broken.
• The cheese filling mixture looked like it might fill half of those if I was lucky. So I kept adding some of this and some of that until it looked like enough.
• My big lasagne pan held 28 filled shells. I had about 8 oz. of filling left over. It wouldn’t have been enough for all 39.
• It’s a good thing I bought two 24-oz. jars of marinara sauce because I used nearly all of it—50% more than one recipe called for and 4 times what the other one called for. I hate to be stingy with sauce.
• The shells came out delicious. Each of us ate only three. It looks like dinner is assured for tomorrow night as well.
• I may try freezing some leftover baked shells, but I won’t try to freeze the 8 oz. of unbaked leftover cheese filling.

Glad it turned out well. An easier way to go is to make baked ziti…all of the flavors, but none of the tedious stuffing.

I never drain my ricotta, either.

I’ve never tried freezing the cheese filling, by itself, before. Here is a thread where they are discussing freezing filled raviolis, some say it works well, others say that the taste and texture are altered, so I’m guessing that freezing the filling alone, would alter it, but it might be OK, even if it looks a little bit different. Here is the thread from Chow

So, then…if I freeze some, how do I reheat it? Seems like some are saying to thaw it at room temperature. Otherwise, what—? Straight from freezer to microwave?

That’s how I’d do it if the pasta had been cooked, plus any meat that was included in the stuffing or meat sauce.

@CWOTUS, which? I named two choices.

I would fill a pan with hot water. And pan thaw it on top of that. Freezer and microwave both dehydrate and toughen food

Oh, I missed the first choice. I go straight to the microwave.

I thaw in the refrigerator. For a full (uncooked) frozen lasagna, I move it from freezer to fridge a full day before I want to cook it.