Can you freeze chilli con carne?
Yes. Freeze it in containers, one meal to each.
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 and dice onions into 1 cm pieces.
- Halve, deseed and dice red pepper into 1 cm pieces.
- Peel and crush garlic clove.
- Stir beef stock cube into water from the kettle in a jug until dissolved.
- Drain and rinse red kidney beans in a sieve.
Brown the mince
- Heat vegetable oil in your largest pan or casserole over a high heat for 2 minutes.
- 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
- Turn the heat to medium. Fry the onion in the fat left in the pan for 5 minutes until soft.
- Add the red pepper, garlic, mild chilli powder, paprika and ground cumin and fry for 2 minutes, stirring.
- Tip the mince back in. Stir in the stock, chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, caster sugar, salt and black pepper.
- 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.
- Stir in the kidney beans and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes until thick.
How to freeze
-
cool any warm dishes before putting them in your freezer
, says the Food Standards Agency. - Pour into your containers, one meal to each, and seal.
How to defrost
-
the safest way to defrost food is in the fridge overnight
, says the Food Standards Agency. - Take it out of its container.
- 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.
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
- 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.
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 freezer bags Any freezer-safe container does the job too.
- Everything from one shop Batch cook it with Nomstash and the freezer bags go on the same shopping list as the food.
Cook what you already cook
-
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
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.