From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and this is good food. Today we consider one of the unsung heroes of the

kitchen, your freezer. About three years ago, I was going through a divorce, and I really didn't have

time to really spend on what I would give on my family and friends and people who give you gifts,

and you're not, you don't quite have

one and i was on a kick of making burritos for my kids and and so yeah one christmas i made like

200 burritos and froze them and gave them away frozen with the instructions written on the

outside and this was the thing I was

most pleased by, but my children are most, like, embarrassed. I put all the burritos in, say, bread

bags or lettuce bags, you know, like the romaine bags and, like, tied a ribbon around them.

We talk a lot about fermentation as a way to preserve food, but rarely do we celebrate the more direct route preservation freezing.

For chef Vivian Howard, her family's standing chest freezer or locker was the means to save all that summer corn and other garden produce while into winter.

In an episode from her latest PBS series, Kitchen

Curious, Vivian explores when the freezer is your friend. Hi. Hi there. I'm so glad to talk to you

about this because I have wanted to talk to somebody about frozen food for so long because I feel like it gets such a bad

rap here in America. Yeah, I feel like we don't stop to actually think about what it is for the

most part and the options it provides for us.

This freezer episode was really kind of the impetus for the whole show.

As you said, growing up here in eastern North Carolina, we harvested things from the garden

and then put them in the freezer, also known as the locker,

I assume because it had a lock on it at some point,

because that was valuable.

So I always thought of frozen food is the next best thing to fresh.

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