Can You Freeze Aburaage?

3 minutes

Aburaage is not the sort of thing you’ll pick up in your local supermarket, is it? Instead, you’ll need to visit a specialist Japanese store. If you’ve managed to get some, you’ll need to consider the best way to store it.

How to Freeze Aburaage

Freezing aburaage isn’t too complex, especially if you’ve frozen meat or meat substitutes before. Follow these steps to ensure you get the most out of your food:

1. Divide: Divide the aburaage into portions since it won’t refreeze well at all. The portion size is for you to decide, but consider freezing a couple of side portions as well as your main portions.
2. Wrap: Wrap the aburaage slices with a loose layer of baking paper. Make sure that the baking paper isn’t tight but that you form a loose seal. This will ensure airflow around the aburaage, but not moisture flow.
3. Wrap Again: Wrapping the parcels with cling film prevents additional moisture from contacting the food. In turn, this prevents the crispy outer layer of the aburaage from becoming soft and unpleasant.
4. Freeze: Freeze the aburaage in the centre of the freezer, ensuring it isn’t making direct contact with ice, where possible.

3 Tips for Freezing Aburaage

Now you know how to freeze it, we’ve got our 3 top tips which we strongly recommend following when freezing Aburaage to have the best results:

Seal with Cling Film
Pressing the cling film directly to the surface of the packaging will ensure that as little air as possible can get to the food. This will prevent the crispy outer coating from going stale, leading to a tasty final meal.

Consider Using an Airtight Container
An airtight container can also be used to ensure that the aburaage doesn’t lose texture in your freezer. If you use an airtight container, select one with as little excess space as possible.

Dry It Fully
Ensuring the aburaage is dry will protect the crispy outer coating, preventing it from becoming soft while frozen, which can be hard to reverse once it’s happened.

How Long Can You Freeze Aburaage?

You can freeze aburaage for around 1 month before it will start to lose quality.

Generally speaking, it will lose quality by becoming less crispy on the outer layer and dry and mushy in the centre.

This can be balanced by ensuring that your wrapping is as airtight as possible, so make sure that’s the case!

How Do You Defrost Aburaage?

You can defrost the aburaage by allowing it to sit in the fridge, totally wrapped, overnight. This will allow it to slowly come to a safe temperature before being stored at that safe temperature until you’re ready to use it.

We recommend cooking the aburaage however you did when you first prepared it – ideally directly into a hot oven, air fryer, or deep fryer to ensure crispiness.

Can You Refreeze Aburaage?

Yes, you can refreeze aburaage.

The main reason for this is that there are no bacteria present in the food, which would make it unsafe to place into your freezer.

However, repeated freezing is likely to damage the aburaage over time. This will commonly take the form of the tofu becoming less and less textured, as water is evaporated out of it, leading to a crumbly aburaage.

Does Aburaage Freeze Well?

Yes, aburaage does freeze quite well.

However, the trade-off is that the aburaage goes from being okay to freezer-damaged quite quickly. To ensure the aburaage is in as good shape as possible, do not leave it in the freezer for too long.

Related FAQs

If you’ve still got questions about freezing aburaage or aburaage in general, then these may help: