Questions people ask before their first cook day

A planner for batch cooking. You pick the dishes, and Nomstash prices the shop at your supermarket, scales every recipe to your portions, makes a label for every container, keeps count of your freezer and tells you each evening what to move to the fridge. See how Nomstash works, step by step.

No. Start with two or three dishes on one cook day. Every recipe is scaled to the portions you plan, and cook mode takes you through each method a step at a time. Our guide on how to plan a cook day is a good place to start.

Households who’d rather cook once than every night: parents, couples, carers, anyone with a freezer and busy evenings. We’ve written guides on batch cooking for new parents and batch cooking for carers.

Yes. Nomstash runs in your web browser at app.nomstash.com, on a phone, a tablet or a computer.

Yes. Whoever sets up the account can invite the rest of the household, and everyone sees the same plan, stash and shopping list.

There are 42 dishes in Nomstash today, from bolognese, chilli and tikka masala to fish pie, lasagne, soups, crumble and flapjack. Each dish is built from recipes for its parts, such as a sauce, a side or a base.

Yes. You set the portions for each person, and Nomstash counts adult, child and baby portions separately, in the plan and in the freezer. Three child portions are never counted as three dinners for an adult.

They’re planned onto another night, so they get eaten rather than found at the back of the fridge.

Some dishes are made on the night. Carbonara is one: eggs and cream don’t freeze, so Nomstash plans it for the night you cook it rather than for the freezer.

From live prices at your supermarket. Nomstash puts the whole cook day on one list and adds it up, so you know the total and what each portion works out at before you shop. Anything the plan takes from your freezer is already off the list.

No. Take the list round the shop or use it for your online order, whichever you do now.

The dish, the date it was made, how many portions are in the container, a code like 5DZU-09LO and a QR code.

Nomstash opens that container, or marks it eaten. Either way, the count of what’s in your freezer stays right.

So two batches of the same dish never get mixed up, and Nomstash knows exactly which container came out and how old it was.

From your cook days. When you add a batch to your stash, each labelled container is counted by dish, portion size and the date it was made. When you scan one out or mark it eaten, it comes off the count.

The oldest. Nomstash keeps it at the top of your stash, so it’s the one that comes out next.

We don’t give limits for each dish. Our guide to freezing and defrosting sets out what the Food Standards Agency says, with a link to its advice. Nomstash shows you the oldest container first, so nothing gets forgotten.

Eat now reminds you the evening before to move it to the fridge. For the rules on defrosting and reheating, read our guide to freezing and defrosting, which links to the Food Standards Agency’s own advice.

The rules on refreezing and reheating are in our guide to freezing and defrosting, in the Food Standards Agency’s and the NHS’s own words. We’d rather point you to them than paraphrase.

Nomstash counts baby portions separately from child and adult ones. For how to store and reheat food for a baby, our guide to freezing and defrosting links to the NHS’s advice.

Nothing during founding access. A paid plan will come later, and nobody pays anything without being told the price first. Here’s what founding access includes.

No. You sign up with your name and email address, and we email you a six-digit code to confirm it.

No. We don’t sell personal data or share it for advertising, and analytics only run if you accept them in the cookie banner. Our privacy policy sets out what we collect and why.

Yes. Email privacy@nomstash.com from the address on your account and ask us to. The privacy policy lists your other rights over your data.