Plan my cook day

Chilli for the freezer, sized for your family

It’s 6pm, the kids are hungry, and tonight’s dinner is already made. You cooked the chilli con carne in one big batch and froze it in containers, one dinner to each. Move a container to the fridge the night before, and that’s dinner.

Makes
8 portions
On the night
Nothing to cook
A portion
About 415 kcal
Plan my cook day

One afternoon of batch cooking, weeks of dinners.

A bowl of chilli with kidney beans, melted cheese, soured cream and spring onions

How to make it

Make it all ahead for the freezer.

Chilli con carne

Make ahead and freeze

Or veggie Chilli

Ingredients for 8 portions

Method

Prep

  1. Boil the kettle.
  2. Peel and dice onions into 1 cm pieces.
  3. Halve, deseed and dice red pepper into 1 cm pieces.
  4. Peel and crush garlic clove.
  5. Stir beef stock cube into water from the kettle in a jug until dissolved.
  6. Drain and rinse red kidney beans in a sieve.

Brown the mince

  1. Heat vegetable oil in your largest pan or casserole over a high heat for 2 minutes.
  2. Fry mince beef in batches of about 500g for 5 minutes each, breaking it up, until browned all over. Tip each batch into a bowl.

Sauce

  1. Turn the heat to medium. Fry the onion in the fat left in the pan for 5 minutes until soft.
  2. Add the red pepper, garlic, mild chilli powder, paprika and ground cumin and fry for 2 minutes, stirring.
  3. Tip the mince back in. Stir in the stock, chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, caster sugar, salt and black pepper.
  4. Bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes, stirring now and then. Add a splash of water from the kettle if it starts to catch.
  5. Stir in the kidney beans and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes until thick.
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Nutrition

Per portion, chilli con carne
Energy
415 kcal
Fat
17.9g
Carbohydrate
26.2g
Protein
34.9g
Nutrition details
Energy
415 kcal
Fat
17.9g
of which saturates
7.4g
Carbohydrate
26.2g
of which sugars
11.1g
Fibre
9.3g
Protein
34.9g
Salt
2.41g

Estimated from ingredient data.

How we’d cook it, not advice. We don’t check recipes for allergens, and ingredients vary by brand, so check the label on everything you use. Prepare and cook food the way the Food Standards Agency says. Allergens and food safety

Chilli Chilli con carne, made ahead and frozen. Chilli concarne
Make ahead and freeze

How it comes together

Ready for the freezer

  1. Make the chilli con carne

  2. Let it cool.

    “cool any warm dishes before putting them in your freezer”, says the Food Standards Agency.

  3. Chilli con carne. Pour into your containers, one meal to each, and seal.

  4. Label each container with the dish and the date.

No special kit. The chilli con carne works best in freezer bags. Any freezer-safe container does the job too.

Ready to eat

  1. The night before, move the chilli con carne to the fridge.

    “the safest way to defrost food is in the fridge overnight”, says the Food Standards Agency.

  2. Chilli con carne. Tip it into a pan and heat it, stirring, until it’s steaming hot all the way through.

    “it is important that food is cooked to steaming hot throughout, rather than warmed”, says the Food Standards Agency.

Nomstash plans the rest

  • Everything from one shop

    The food and the freezer bags on one shopping list, with an estimated cost before you go.

  • Sized for your family

    Say who’s eating and every container holds the right amount, growing as the children do.

  • No more UFOs

    Unidentified Frozen Objects, as the Food Standards Agency calls them. Each container says what’s inside and the day you made it.

  • A reminder the night before

    Nomstash tells you which container to move to the fridge for tomorrow’s dinner.

Plan my cook day

  • Already keep a freezer spreadsheet?

    Paste it in from Excel or Google Sheets, or choose a CSV file, and Nomstash reads it into your stash.

    Bring in my freezer list

Make it a cook day

Add two or three more dishes to the same afternoon, and one shop covers the lot.

Batch cooking: cook once, eat all month

Freezing and defrosting safely

The rest of the Food Standards Agency’s advice, in their words, is in our freezing and defrosting guide.

Sources

  1. Food Standards Agency How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely gov.uk
  2. Food Standards Agency Cooking your food gov.uk

Last checked . Each quotation on this page was read against the page it links to.

Make chilli your first batch.

Nomstash plans the shop, sizes every container and reminds you the night before. Nomstash is in beta.

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