The rules in one table
Ten rules take a cook day from the pan to the plate. Each one is in plain words first, then in the source’s own words, with a link to the page they’re on.
Last checked by the Nomstash team, against the FSA and NHS pages listed under Sources.
| The rule | In the source’s words |
|---|---|
| Cooling | |
| Cool cooked food and get it into the fridge or freezer within one to two hours. | |
| Cool rice within an hour and put it straight in the fridge or freezer. Eat rice from the fridge within 24 hours. | |
| Freezing | |
| Keep the freezer at around -18°C. | |
| You can freeze food up to midnight on its use-by date. | |
| Label everything that goes in the freezer. | |
| Defrosting | |
| Defrost in the fridge overnight. If you can’t, use the microwave’s defrost setting just before cooking. | |
| Once it’s fully defrosted, eat it within 24 hours. | |
| Reheating | |
| Food that’s been cooked and frozen is reheated once, not again after that. | |
| Reheat until it’s steaming hot all the way through. For a baby, let it cool before serving. | |
| Leftovers | |
| Eat leftovers within 48 hours, or freeze them. | |
How long in the freezer
The FSA treats time in the freezer as a question of quality, not safety. In its note on freezer burn, which
happens when cold, dry air gets at food, it says the process affects the quality of the foods, rather than the
safety
. It gives these ranges for food at its best:
Meats are usually best eaten within 2-3 months.
Baked goods, fruit and veg are best between 3-4 months.
Both are from the FSA’s guide to chilling, freezing and defrosting. Nomstash doesn’t set a time limit for each dish. It shows how long every container has been in the freezer and puts the oldest first, so that’s the one you eat next.
Cooking for a baby
The NHS has its own page on storing and reheating food for babies, and it starts with batch
cooking: If you’re batch-cooking, cool the food down (ideally within 1 to 2 hours) and then freeze or
refrigerate.
The rest of it, in short:
- Reheat until it’s steaming hot all the way through, then let it cool before your baby has it.
- Reheat already-cooked food once.
- Cool rice within an hour and put it straight in the fridge or freezer.
- Once it’s defrosted, eat it within 24 hours.
The NHS’s exact words for each are in the table above. Nomstash counts baby portions separately from adult and child ones, so you can see what’s there for the baby without reading every label.
What Nomstash does: move to the fridge
The FSA’s safest way to defrost is in the fridge overnight. The hard part is remembering to do it at nine o’clock the night before.
Before bed: move Wednesday’s tikka masala to the fridge
Every evening, the Eat now screen tells you which container to move to the fridge for tomorrow, oldest first. By the next evening it’s defrosted, ready to heat until it’s steaming hot. Scan the label when you serve it and Nomstash marks it eaten, so the count stays right.
If you forget, it happens. Nomstash shows you what’s ready in 20 minutes instead. Here’s how Nomstash works, from the plan to Eat now.
New to cook days? Batch cooking for beginners starts at the beginning, and how to plan a cook day walks through one afternoon by the clock.
Sources
- Food Standards Agency How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely gov.uk
- NHS Storing and reheating food (Best Start in Life) nhs.uk
Last checked by the Nomstash team. Each quotation on this page was read against the page it links to.