Can you freeze lentil bolognese?
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 4 portions.
Ingredients for 4 portions
Method
Prep
- Boil the kettle.
- Toast walnuts in your largest dry saucepan over a medium heat for 3 minutes until fragrant. Tip onto a board and chop into 5 mm pieces.
- Peel and dice onions and carrot into 1 cm pieces.
- Peel and crush garlic clove.
Sauce
- Heat olive oil in the same pan over a low heat. Fry the onion and carrot with salt for 6 minutes until mostly soft.
- Add the garlic and sprig of fresh rosemary and fry for 1 minute.
- Stir in dried green lentils, chopped tomatoes, water from the kettle and tomato puree.
- Bring back to the boil, then simmer uncovered for 35 minutes, stirring now and then, until the lentils are soft and the sauce is thick. Add a splash of water if it catches.
- Lift out the rosemary stalks. Stir in the walnuts, balsamic vinegar and black pepper, then taste for salt.
- Cool, then portion.
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
- 407 kcal
- Fat
- 12.1g
- Carbohydrate
- 51g
- Protein
- 20.2g
Nutrition details
- Energy
- 407 kcal
- Fat
- 12.1g
- of which saturates
- 1.4g
- Carbohydrate
- 51g
- of which sugars
- 16.4g
- Fibre
- 11.8g
- Protein
- 20.2g
- Salt
- 0.78g
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.