The ingredients you didn’t know you could buy frozen!

We asked our Fresh from the Freezer fans to share their top frozen food tips with us and we got a huge response – you really love your frozen!

Frozen cuts down on food waste and preparation time and is great to have as a back-up for a mid-week dish or a meal in a rush.

There are certain frozen food staples, frozen peas or frozen prawns for example, but there are a lot of ingredients people don’t realise they can buy frozen.

Here’s a few of our Cool Cooks’ favourites and top tips on how to use them:

Frozen mashed potato/sweet potato

Frozen mashed potato was very popular in the top tips sent in as it is a much speedier way of making mashed potato to go in a range of meals.

The classic shepherd’s or cottage pies were very popular and one tip was to use frozen mashed potato for the topping of a corned beef pie.

Frozen mashed potato is great for an easy-to-prepare addition to any family meal, save on the washing up and reduce wasted excess mash as it’s really easy to portion as needed.

For a cottage pie with a sweet potato twist, click here for our easy-to-follow video recipe.

Frozen onions

Frozen, chopped onions are a kitchen life-saver and maybe the freezer’s best kept secret. If you’ve not already discovered frozen onions, where have you been?!

Ready diced and easy to portion, say goodbye to fiddly chopping and tonnes of tears and simply open the freezer, portion out what you need, cook straight from frozen and store the leftover onions back in the freezer for next time.

Lots of our fans love frozen onions for chucking into the bases of stews or spaghetti Bolognese but Lorna Gardner likes to use her frozen onions for adding into burgers instead of chopping from fresh – easy!

Frozen Herbs

This one might be a surprise, but you can indeed buy a selection of ready-chopped frozen herbs and spices to keep stored in your freezer for whenever you need them.

There’s no need to worry about buying in bulk and watching parsley and basil wilt and die in the fridge when it’s not needed. With frozen, you can keep herbs all year long and take out whatever you need, whenever you need it.

You can also get pre-portioned frozen garlic, ginger and lemon zest amongst others, so you can always add a burst of flavour to any dish!

Sandy Goodson is a big fan of frozen herbs, here’s her tip: “Frozen herbs are wonderful. Just sprinkle them in, no need to defrost and they are so much more aromatic than dried. Basil is my favourite as it’s so handy for making tomato based dishes like spaghetti Bolognese etc.”