Can you freeze spiced carrot and lentil soup?
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 water in the kettle.
- Coarsely grate carrot. For a big batch, the grating disc on a food processor saves a lot of time.
Toast the spices
- Heat your biggest saucepan over a medium heat. Add cumin seeds and chilli flakes and toast for 1 minute, stirring, until they start to pop.
- Scoop out about half the spices and set aside for the top.
Soup
- Add olive oil to the pan with the rest of the spices, then stir in the grated carrot, dried red lentils, the water from the kettle and whole milk. Crumble in vegetable stock cube.
- Bring to the boil, then turn down to a simmer.
- Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring now and then, until the lentils are soft and swollen.
Blend and serve
- Blend with a stick blender until smooth, or leave it chunky.
- Taste and season.
To eat now
- Ladle into bowls and top each with a spoonful of natural yoghurt and a pinch of the saved spices.
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. - Ladle into bowls and top each with a spoonful of yoghurt.
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
- 279 kcal
- Fat
- 9.7g
- Carbohydrate
- 32.8g
- Protein
- 11.5g
Nutrition details
- Energy
- 279 kcal
- Fat
- 9.7g
- of which saturates
- 2.1g
- Carbohydrate
- 32.8g
- of which sugars
- 13.6g
- Fibre
- 9.7g
- Protein
- 11.5g
- Salt
- 1.29g
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
Bought a 1kg bag of carrots? Use the rest of the bag of carrots : honey roast carrots and scrap vegetable stock in the same session.
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.