Plan my cook day

Soup for the freezer, sized for your family

It’s 6pm, the kids are hungry, and tonight’s dinner is already made. You cooked the broccoli and stilton soup 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
4 portions
On the night
Nothing to cook
A portion
About 364 kcal
Plan my cook day

One afternoon of batch cooking, weeks of dinners.

Bowls of orange soup topped with feta and pumpkin seeds

How to make it

Make it all ahead for the freezer.

Broccoli and stilton soup

Make ahead and freeze

Or spiced carrot and lentil soup , squash, mushroom and chestnut soup or tomato soup

Ingredients for 4 portions

Method

Prep

  1. Boil water in the kettle.
  2. Peel and dice onions into 1 cm pieces.
  3. Slice celery stick thinly.
  4. Slice leek into thin rounds.
  5. Dice maris piper potatoes into 1 cm cubes.
  6. Cut head of broccoli into small florets and slice the stalk 1 cm thick.

Soften the vegetables

  1. Heat vegetable oil in your biggest pan over a medium heat.
  2. Add the onion and fry for 5 minutes, stirring now and then, until soft.
  3. Add the celery, leek, potato and unsalted butter and stir until the butter melts.
  4. Cover and let the vegetables sweat for 5 minutes, then take the lid off.

Simmer

  1. Crumble in vegetable stock cube, pour in the water from the kettle and add the broccoli stalks.
  2. Simmer for 15 minutes until the potato is soft.
  3. Add the florets and cook for 5 minutes more.

Blend

  1. Blend the soup in the pan with a stick blender until smooth.
  2. Crumble in stilton and stir, leaving a few lumps.
  3. Season with black pepper.

To eat now

  1. Ladle into bowls and serve.
Add to stash: Broccoli and stilton soup Always in: Broccoli and stilton soup

Made some already? Add it to your stash. Mark it always in and Nomstash tells you when you’re running low.

Nutrition

Per portion, broccoli and stilton soup
Energy
364 kcal
Fat
24.5g
Carbohydrate
19g
Protein
15g
Nutrition details
Energy
364 kcal
Fat
24.5g
of which saturates
13.8g
Carbohydrate
19g
of which sugars
6.6g
Fibre
5.8g
Protein
15g
Salt
1.97g

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

Soup with broccoli and stilton soup Broccoli and stilton soup, made ahead and frozen. Broccoli andstilton soup
Make ahead and freeze

How it comes together

Ready for the freezer

  1. Make the broccoli and stilton soup

  2. Let it cool.

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

  3. Broccoli and stilton soup. Pour into your containers, one meal to each, and seal.

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

No special kit. The broccoli and stilton soup works best in freezer bags. Any freezer-safe container does the job too.

Ready to eat

  1. The night before, move the broccoli and stilton soup to the fridge.

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

  2. Broccoli and stilton soup. 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

Use the rest of the head of broccoli

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 soup your first batch.

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

Plan my cook day I already have an account