Is DIY Frozen Fruit Actually Cheaper? The Hidden Math of Peels, Pits, and Power Bills

It's peak blackberry season, here. We picked 5 quarts of fresh berries today.

Yesterday we talked about how each of our styles of frugality look slightly different from one another. Some of us don't do much in the way of DIY. And some of us might want to try some easy DIY. Here's an easy one for you -- home-frozen fruit to use in winter.

If you've ever wanted to freeze fruit to use in winter for smoothies or desserts, but didn't know if it was worth it, I have a couple of tools for you. With these tools, you can easily see if freezing fruit, even bought fruit, is a good deal compared to commercially frozen fruit.

How Much Fruit Do You Really Get?

This first tool I want to offer is a cheat chart to help you figure out the cost of usable flesh of fruit. I've included the common smoothie fruits that are sold frozen and whose yield is less than the original fruit size/weight. You can assume that blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries have a 100% edible yield.

While fresh bananas are available year round, I've included them in the table, as they do sometimes go on a drastic markdown. And you might want to know how much edible fruit you would yield. By the way, Walmart does sell frozen banana slices, $2.47 for a one-pound bag. Using the table above and formula below, when bananas are their usual price at Walmart of 55 cents per pound (in my area), the cost for usable fruit per pound is $1.04. In my area, there is never a scenario when buying the frozen banana slices at Walmart is a better deal than buying the fresh bananas and slicing/freezing them myself. But if you live somewhere that fresh banana prices are crazy high, the frozen ones might make sense.

In addition to the chart, here's my second tool for you, the formula for figuring the value of home-frozen fruit after processing: 

Fresh Price per Pound ÷ Edible Yield in Decimal = 

True Price per Usable Pound

After gently rinsing the berries, I freeze them spread out on a baking sheet
 lined with waxed paper. Parchment or silicone pan liners also work well.

Numbers In Practice

To help me explain, let's use an example of fresh peaches. At Walmart, fresh peaches are currently $3.67 for a 2-lb bag, or $1.83/lb. And peaches are 78% edible flesh, no skin, no pit. Using the formula:

$1.83 ÷  .78 = $2.35 per usable pound.

Walmart also sells frozen sliced peaches, which could be used in smoothies or desserts. It's a one-pound bag priced at $2.86.

In this case, buying the 2-lb bag of fresh peaches is a better value than the pre-sliced frozen peaches. However, we need to factor in the cost of a freezer bag and the cost to keep the fruit frozen over a 6-month duration. 

The storage bag, if new, costs about 5 cents to 15 cents per quart freezer bag (about what would be needed for 1 pound of prepared fruit). The cost to keep that 1-lb bag of peach chunks frozen for 6 months in a medium-sized chest freezer (manual defrost), which is 10 years old or less, would be about 16 to 22 cents, depending on your freezer and electricity rates in your area. That brings our cost per pound for home-frozen peaches (bought at Walmart) to $2.35 + $0.05 + $0.16 = $2.56 (if utility rates are on the low end in your region). 

You can save on the bag by reusing a freezer bag you already own. And if you're going to have something in your freezer anyway, the actual cost to add a 1-lb bag of peach chunks is negligible.

For me, if I wanted peaches to add to my smoothies this winter, I could save about 30 cents/lb by peeling and chopping some Walmart fresh peaches.

Alternate Peach Scenario

Let's say I lived where peaches are often priced around $1 per pound at the height of season.

My cost per usable pound would be $1.28. Even with the cost of a bag and the freezer cost for 6-months, I would save about 55% off the price of commercially-prepared frozen peaches.

Just an FIY, manual defrost freezers are vastly superior for fruit storage than auto-defrost kitchen freezers. Auto-defrost units periodically heat up their interior coils to melt frost, which subtly thaws and refreezes the outer edges of the food inside. This process creates lots of ice crystals and causes rapid freezer burn. In addition, a manual defrost freezer can use up to 40% less energy than an identically sized auto-defrost model.

It's unlikely that most of us will charge on over to Walmart this afternoon and buy a bag of peaches so we can chop and freeze them. The savings per pound weren't huge.

All of these berries are free to us. I've now frozen about 30 quarts of blackberries.
We'll use these in smoothies, pies, cobblers, and crisp this winter.

There are a couple of scenarios where freezing fruit is super advantageous and one where it's not so much.

1.The "Backyard Goldmine" (Free or Wild Fruit)

When fruit is free (from a neighbor's tree, foraging, or your own yard), the monetary value of freezing is always 100%.

The true cost here is time and storage equipment. We ought to factor in the cost of freezer bags, and the energy cost of running a chest freezer.

Best Fruits to Prep: Strawberries and Peaches, because they process quickly (especially if leaving the skin on for peaches) and lose very little total mass to waste, plus Blueberries, Raspberries, and Blackberries, because they are quick and easy to process and have zero waste.

2.The "Orchard Region Advantage" (Local Glut Pricing)

In areas like Georgia and South Carolina (peaches), Washington State (apples/cherries), or Michigan (berries), seasonal gluts drive fresh prices rock-bottom—often below wholesale frozen costs. 

Hint: look for "Seconds" or "Utility Grade" fruit at local orchards and farm stands. These are fruits with minor cosmetic blemishes and are perfectly fine for slicing, chunking, and freezing, but sold at a fraction of supermarket price. 

3.The "High-Waste Trap" 

Here's where we need to be careful. Even in a low cost-of-living area where grocery prices are favorable, certain fruits are rarely worth freezing yourself. 

Pineapples and Mangoes. Because you throw away up to 48% of what you buy, a fresh pineapple has to be essentially half the price per pound of a frozen bag of pineapple chunks to break even on value. However, we do sometimes come across a really great markdown on fruit. It could be the store has more pineapples on hand than they believe they can sell soon, so they drastically mark them down. The other issue with pineapples is they're generally sold per piece, and not by the pound. You would need to find the scale and weigh a few, then determine a rough price per pound. Incidentally, most supermarket pineapples weigh in the 3-pound region.

The key takeaway today is if you're freezing free backyard fruit, the combined overhead of a new bag and the electricity is only about $0.21 to $0.27 per quart. That is an incredible financial win. However, if you are paying supermarket prices for fresh fruit and factoring in this storage overhead, the financial savings over pre-frozen store-bought bags quickly shrink.

Do you think you'll be freezing any fruit this summer? Do you have free sources of fruit? Or do you live in one of the orchard areas with spectacular fruit prices on specific fruits? What is the main fruit most folks in your area like to stock in their freezers?