Boy - creating a new post is really a PIA. DH isn't great about I.D.-ing what's in there.

Thank you gardengal.

I would recommend that you stuff a little plastic wrap or parchment on the "air space" LOOSELY on those commercial jars. Contents will expand. I use canning jars with plastic lids and keep open 1/4" to 1/2" headspace. I also found that if you dollop stuff like tomato paste, pesto, or gremolota on parchment, freeze and then bag, or put stuff like diced tomatoes, pasta sauce, pineapple tidbits in ice cube trays it keeps nicely for using later when you just need a dollop.

Just be really careful handling it. It seems that frozen packages get dropped more than fridge ones.

Love Nancy's suggestions, but if your freezer has an evaporator, do bag up anything you freeze loose or in ice trays, unless they're airtight, because they'll lose a lot of moisture. My covered ice trays have produced a very nice lemon paste that way. :) (from fresh squeezed juice).

Should be OK as long as there's enough room for the sauce to expand when it freezes. I always loosen the lid until it's completely frozen, just to be safe, and then tighten it once it's solidly frozen.

It depends on the shape of the jar, size of the jar, how the air circulates in the freezer and what kind of material is in the jar, how thick is the jar, etc. I wouldn't take a chance.

dcarch

I’d do more than leave head space, I’d leave the lids off until frozen. I’d think a straight sided jar would be safer than a bottle like in dcarch’s video, but the risk of bursting could still be there. Seems like a waste of freezer space to store half empty jars though.

Thanks to you all. We only use 1/2 of a jar of marinara, so there's lots of room for expansion - don't want to add to the mishmash of stuff in plastic containers right now and don't want it going bad in the refrigerator. It's just the two of us, and at our age we're lazy cooks and light eaters...

Having been single for decades, I became very aware of the dilemma of the half used jar of marinara sauce getting forgotten in the fridge and going bad/molding. Then I started freezing them. Have done it many times, no issues. As long as it isn't a full one, because yes, then expansion becomes an issue. Also don't heat up in microwave to thaw, that can result in breakage because sauce gets hot but outside heats up slower so possible thermal shock.

We always defrost what we're going to cook from the freezer. We're looking at another 6-8 weeks of staying in place here and will be misers keeping what we have for meals. We're retired, used to just winging it - going to the store every day or so to find what suits us but not now. But ironically, over the past year, we have let our pantry of staples dwindle because it was too full and stuff was expiring...I always bought provisions for hurricanes and nor'easters but it piled up and it's not things we would normally eat. So we're in survival mode!!

May be better to use seal-able silicone bags to freeze sauces. Takes less freezer room and you can cut chunks of what you need.

dcarch

Seagrass I often freeze things in glass jars, most notably home pressed cider because if I can it, it's just apple juice. I like to use wide mouth canning jars, because they have straight sides and are easier to get things out of, but I always leave at least an inch of head space, probably more.

My brother freezes things like BBQ sauce and nuts in whatever glass jars he has on hand, whether from pasta sauce, jam or honey or whatever, and reuses the lids that came with those jars to seal them. It's more economical than my way, he's not using new lid, and it works great for him and my Mother. He just labels everything, because frozen BBQ sauce looks a lot like frozen spaghetti sauce which looks a lot like frozen pizza sauce, and he's had some surprise meals, LOL.

Annie

My father used to freeze Dr Pepper, and it would often explode in the freezer. I wrote a story about this, but don't have it with me now. I think carbonated beverages are more dangerous to freeze in glass than regular liquids, but I still do not do it.

I have been freezing pasta sauce for just the same reason, but lately I've had some problems. I don't think too far ahead and need to defrost fairly quickly in time for a meal. After the last jar of Rao's shattered in the microwave even by gently heating it on half power, I used a canning jar for some left over tomato sauce the next time. That didn't work out well when I warmed it in a saucepan on the cooktop. It broke too! :-( I think next time, if there's a next time, I need to defrost it in the sink thinking further ahead!

I freeze things in glass jars all the time. I like to use straight sided jars because then I can warm in a sink of warm water and the chunk of frozen stuff will slide out and can be heated quickly.
BUT....freezing a half a jar with a lot of head room will allow the top layer of the sauce to get "gummy"...loose moisture. So I would re package into a smaller jar with less head room....or, after it's frozen solid, put a thin layer of water on top to freeze and keep the sauce itself fresh.

I might also add that tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce also looks a lot like salsa and I fried some little kids mouths by serving them salsa over spaghetti....hot salsa!

Thanks for all of your help. Well, it didn't stay in the freezer long! We decided to have the rest of it again tonight so the jar is sitting on the counter to defrost.

Yeah... don't freeze carbonated beverages like in the video dcarch shared. That glass bottle shattered because of the carbonation in the water. Not because it was a glass bottle.

Compumom, a canning jar won't make a difference when you heat a frozen jar, the thermal shock is just going to break it, although the canning jar might hold out a little longer. If you have a jar of frozen food, it has to be thawed slowly. I have put a frozen canning jar into lukewarm water and thawed it a little more quickly, but that's about as fast as it gets. As LindaC said, though, if it's in a wide mouthed canning jar if you just thaw the outside it will slip out of the jar and then you can heat it safely.

Annie

Something just occurred to me. Glass probably does much better in a frost free freezer than in a manual defrost that doesn't get attended before the ice builds up. :)

I prefer polypropylene containers for any number of reasons. I get the just shove the jar in the freezer idea, but if you use a freezer container (or bag), you can dump your block right into a pot and heat it up fast. It might be better defrosted in the fridge, but tomato sauces are pretty forgiving, and there isn't anything in marinara to go weird. Just don't heat it so fast the sauce breaks.

We have a small chest freezer in the basement, and everything that goes in there is vacuum sealed. In our kitchen, we have a bottom pull out freezer drawer where more identifiable short term stuff goes, as well as frequently used frozen vegetables like peas, corn, spinach and pearl onions. Short term goals with meat, as well, and potpies from a favorite shop. Chowder and stuffed clams that weather well frozen.

Whatever is your religion, we all feel that the Creator is amazing.

When a Jar cracks in the freezer. I feel religious. :-)

All material shrinks when subjected to cold temperature, all except H2O.

Water expands and therefore it floats. Ice forms on top of water allowing life to go on below it. If ice sinks, today there may be no life on the earth.

That creates a problem in the video I linked. the shape of the bottle creates an ice plug, giving no expansion room to the water below to go, so the bottle cracks.

It's mostly the geometry of the glass vessel why cracking occurs. when ice is forming, it creates force from 25,000 to 114,000 psi.

dcarch

I've never had a mason jar crack at freezing temps, but I have had other types of glass jars just seem to crack from being frozen. Plenty of air space, just think the glass wasn't meant to be frozen or something. I'd always move it to a mason canning jar.

I used to save pint jars that had the correct thread for putting mason lids on, to use in the canner for jam, but found that the glass was just a bit thinner and more fragile (I'm thinking like mayo jars), so I no longer do that either.

Anyone who has ever seen what a frozen body of water can do to things left to freeze knows of the force exerted by freezing water.
Cold doesn't cause glass to break, it's the warming that is the devil.....any stresses or bubbles may cause a weak spot.

I freeze milk in clean water bottles and I don't fill them full. That is the right size for me to thaw when needed or if more is needed, take out two bottles. I usually pour the water from the bottles in my iced tea maker to make iced tea. I have had two many glass canning jars break with milk in them in the freezer.

Sue