8 freezer ingredients to always keep on hand plus our favourite recipes to make with them
Make the most of your freezer with our pick of the best ingredients to have in hand (and not a frozen pea insight).
We all know you can batch cook, make double, triple even of your everyday pasta sauces and pies for the freezer, but sometimes the most helpful freezer meals are ones that begin with a star ingredient. Frozen ingredients extend beyond broccoli and peas, sweetcorn and berries - there’s a great range of yummy foods to have on hand (looking at you, frozen dumplings) to elevate your midweek meals. Here in the GH Kitchen we’ve been experimenting with different ingredients and have rounded up some of our best recipes for you to try. Now, back to those dumplings...
Dumplings
My own personal favourite, frozen dumplings are one of the speediest ingredients you can have on hand for a quick midweek meal. Steamed and served with coriander rice (ahem, sometimes straight out of the packet...) and a handful of veggies, or baked in the oven in a creamy coconut sauce, like this one-pan dumpling bake.
Fish
Yes, we’ve all got a box (or 2!) of fish fingers lurking in the freezer to be sandwiched with tartar sauce and fluffy bread, but frozen fillets are a great hands-off option for a ‘throw-it-all-together' kind of meal, like our cod and puttanesca bake with garlic bread crumb.
Chips
Ah the frozen chip. I’ll let you decide if it’s skinny or thick cut you fancy (or maybe even waffle-cut?!) but we all have a bag on hand for dinner time emergencies. Our chicken and chip traybake recipe is drizzled with a tasty red pepper sauce, and there’s plenty for dipping your chips.
Parathas
Not something you might typically have in the freezer, but something we highly reocmmend you do. They’re cooked from frozen with no oil needed, and transform into flaky discs that are perfect for serving with curries or even soups. We’ve developed a recipe for a paratha croquettes monsieur that’s topped with a creamy curried bechamel and plenty of melted cheese.
Edamame
You could describe edamame as a fancier frozen pea, perfect for throwing into stir fries or pho-style noodle bowls. We’ve blitzed them up into a delicious pesto in our edamame and pea pasta with a delicious garlic and pine nut crumb.
Spinach
A bag of fresh spinach will often wilt before you’ve had time to use it all up, so keeping a stash in the freezer makes it easy to throw a handful into dishes like our 6 ingredient green mac n cheese recipe.
Sweetcorn
Fritters are a great way to get some veg into your diet and the smoky black bean and corn ones are the perfect way to use up frozen sweetcorn.
Prawns
A bag of prawns gives you means to cook up a pasta or curry in minutes and our 15min prawn and pineapple curry puts them to the test with a fruity, aromatic sauce.
Linzi joins the Good Housekeeping team as Kitchen Manager, looking after the brand-new, state-of-the art test and demo kitchens based in the heart of Leicester Square. With over a decade of experience producing food content for leading brands, she’s won awards for her recipes, battled Christmas dinners in July, and spent a lot of time pondering the next big food trend (no more pistachio, please!) Originally from the North East of Scotland, she lives in West London with her Italian husband and twin daughters, feeding them a variety of haggis and ragu - depending on the mood!
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