Can you freeze beef cottage pie?
Yes, before its final cook. Freeze it in portions, one to each container.
How to freeze and defrost it, with the Food Standards Agency’s advice at each step.
The recipe
One batch makes 8 portions.
Ingredients for 8 portions
Method
Prep
- Boil the kettle.
- Peel maris piper potatoes and cut into 4 cm chunks.
- Dice onions and carrot into 1 cm pieces.
- Slice chestnut mushroom 5 mm thick.
- Pick the leaves from sprig of thyme.
- Zest lemon and grate extra mature cheddar cheese.
Filling
- Dissolve beef stock cube in water from the kettle in a jug.
- Heat olive oil in your biggest casserole pan over a medium heat. Fry the onion, carrot, mushrooms and thyme for 10 minutes until softened.
- Add mince beef a handful at a time so the pan stays hot, breaking it up, and fry for 8 minutes until browned all over.
- Stir in plain flour and cook for 1 minute.
- Pour in bitter and the stock and add dried bay leaf.
- Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring now and then, until thick.
Mash
- While the filling simmers, boil the kettle again, put the potatoes in a large saucepan and pour over enough boiling water to cover. Bring back to the boil.
- Simmer for 15 minutes until a knife slides in easily.
- Drain, then mash with unsalted butter, single cream and the lemon zest.
- Take the bay leaves out of the filling.
Assemble and bake
- Spoon the filling into your containers, one meal to each, and spread the mash over the top.
- Scatter over the cheese.
To eat now
- Preheat the oven to 180°C fan.
- Bake for 30 minutes until golden and bubbling.
How to freeze
-
cool any warm dishes before putting them in your freezer
, says the Food Standards Agency. - Put the lid on the container.
How to defrost
-
the safest way to defrost food is in the fridge overnight
, says the Food Standards Agency. - Take the lid off.
- Heat it in the oven until it’s steaming hot all the way through and golden.
-
it is important that food is cooked to steaming hot throughout, rather than warmed
, says the Food Standards Agency.
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
Nutrition
Per portion- Energy
- 680 kcal
- Fat
- 31.1g
- Carbohydrate
- 63.4g
- Protein
- 35.8g
Nutrition details
- Energy
- 680 kcal
- Fat
- 31.1g
- of which saturates
- 14.8g
- Carbohydrate
- 63.4g
- of which sugars
- 9.4g
- Fibre
- 8.2g
- Protein
- 35.8g
- Salt
- 0.98g
Estimated from ingredient data.
Made some already? Add it to your stash. Mark it always in and Nomstash tells you when you’re running low.
Used in
No special kit
- Works best in foil trays with lids Any freezer-safe container does the job too.
- Everything from one shop Batch cook it with Nomstash and the foil trays with lids go on the same shopping list as the food.
Cook what you already cook
-
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Paste it in from Excel or Google Sheets, or choose a CSV file, and Nomstash reads it into your stash.
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Freezing and defrosting safely
The Food Standards Agency’s advice, in their words.
Label everything you freeze.
label food you freeze so you don’t end up with Unidentified Frozen Objects (UFOs)
The rest of the Food Standards Agency’s advice, in their words, is in our freezing and defrosting guide.
Sources
- Food Standards Agency How to chill, freeze and defrost food safely gov.uk
- Food Standards Agency Cooking your food gov.uk
Last checked . Each quotation on this page was read against the page it links to.