Can you freeze it?

Very little, wrapped tightly. The enemy is air rather than time: freezer burn is drying, and it shows as grey patches that cook tough.

Do this first: Wrap in the portions you will actually cook. A 2kg block, half-thawed and refrozen, is the one genuinely bad outcome.

Shorter than whole cuts because far more surface is exposed to air. Past that it browns and tastes flat rather than becoming unsafe.

Holds well. Skin can come back slightly rubbery, which roasting fixes and poaching does not.

The shortest time on the whole chart, which surprises people. Salt and fat both accelerate rancidity, so bacon degrades in a freezer faster than a plain pork chop does.

Oily fish such as salmon and mackerel sit at the short end, white fish at the long end. Fat is what turns.

Do this first: Freeze it the day you buy it, not the day it is about to go off. Freezing pauses quality, it cannot restore it.

Fine. Fully cooked sausage only keeps 1 to 2 months, which is the opposite of what most people assume.

Cured, wet and sliced thin, so they pick up freezer flavours quickly. Good cooked into something, poor in a sandwich.

Nothing. Butter is the single best thing in a freezer, and salted keeps longer than unsalted.

It turns crumbly and will not slice cleanly again. Perfectly good grated into a sauce, a gratin or a toastie. Not a cheeseboard.

Do this first: Grate it before freezing and you get the crumbliness on your own terms.

Brie and similar separate and go grainy. Cook with it afterwards or do not bother.

It separates. Shaking it hard once thawed brings most of it back and it is fine in cooking, tea and baking. In a glass you will notice.

Do this first: Pour a little out of the bottle first. It expands.

The texture breaks and goes watery. Fine stirred into a curry or a smoothie, wrong on granola.

The contents expand and split the shell, which is both a mess and a contamination risk.

Do this first: Crack them, beat lightly and freeze the liquid. That works well and keeps for months.

They split on thawing and no amount of stirring brings them back. Freeze the dish before the cream goes in and add it when you reheat.

They thaw soft and weep juice. Ideal for baking, smoothies, compote and porridge. Sad on a plate.

Do this first: Open-freeze on a tray first, then bag them, or you get one solid brick.

They go brown and completely soft, which is exactly what banana bread and smoothies want.

Do this first: Peel first. Peeling a frozen banana is a genuinely miserable job.

For cooking afterwards only. They brown and soften.

Do this first: Slice and toss with lemon juice to slow the browning.

They collapse on thawing. Crumbles, pies and compotes.

Segments turn to mush. Juice and zest freeze perfectly, and zest is the thing most people throw away and then buy.

The shortest fruit times here, because both are mostly water and collapse entirely. Frozen grapes eaten still frozen are genuinely good. Thawed ones are not.

Never the same sliced. Mashed with a squeeze of lime it freezes well and comes back fine as guacamole.

Excellent, blanched. Unblanched they lose colour and taste grassy within a couple of months.

Do this first: Two to three minutes in boiling water, straight into iced water, then dry properly.

Wilts to a fraction of its volume and will never be a salad again. For cooking it is as good as fresh and takes a tenth of the space.

They go soft, which does not matter because they were going into a pan anyway. No blanching needed.

Do this first: Chop first. Freezing a whole onion helps nobody.

One of the few that needs no blanching. They soften, so cooking only.

They come back mealy, watery and faintly sweet. Chips and roast potatoes freeze well once par-cooked; raw potatoes do not freeze at all.

Do this first: Par-boil or par-fry, cool, then freeze.

Skins slip off and the flesh collapses, which is fine for sauce and useless for salad. The short time reflects acidity plus water content.

High water content and thin cell walls, so they thaw limp and translucent. There is no technique that fixes this.

Raw they go slimy. Sauteed first they freeze very well, which is why you will find both answers online and both are right.

Do this first: Cook them off in a dry pan first.

Reliable. Shorter than raw ingredients because it has been cooked once already and will be cooked again.

Do this first: Cool fully before it goes in. Putting hot food in raises the temperature of everything around it.

Better than reliable: most improve. Potato in them turns slightly grainy, which is the one thing to watch for.

Do this first: Freeze flat in bags. They stack, and they thaw in a fraction of the time a tub takes.

Freezing is the only good way to keep bread. The fridge is actively worse than the counter, because refrigeration stales bread faster.

Do this first: Slice before freezing and take out what you need.

Both freeze and both come back softer. Rice needs care for a different reason: cool it quickly and freeze it the same day it is cooked.

Nothing at all, and it bakes from frozen with a couple of minutes added. Arguably better, since colder dough spreads less.

Hold up well unfrosted. Buttercream freezes; anything with fresh cream or a custard filling does not.

Batter and breadcrumb turn soft and oily. Takeaway fried food reheated from frozen is never worth the freezer space.