::Finally plucks up the courage to delurk due to nascent interest in soup-making combined with deep respect for the Wisdom of the Dopers. Deep breath…::
Hello. Bear with me, I tend to ramble. If you are in a hurry to impart soup-freezing wisdom, feel free to skip the following paragraph. I certainly won’t be offended, and this is after all Cafe Society not MPSIMS.
My food tastes were deeply stunted by a childhood spent eating ASDA’s Value fish fingers, Batchelor’s Savoury Rice, Findus Crispy Pancakes, and other abominations against food (perhaps someone can translate the above into US equivelants- the theme is horrible horrible processed convenience foods). However, I am slowly recovering: I had made the transition from tinned soup to chilled ready-made fresh stuff in cartons, for example. Then recently I was offered a cup of homemade carrot and coriander soup by a colleague during a long dark nightshift. I had tried a couple of ready-made carrot-based soups and found them rather boring and disconcertingly sweet, but it would have been rude to refuse so I tried it. What a revelation! It was rich and complicated and georgeous, something to be savoured and celebrated and it made me feel satisfied and happy.
Since then, I have wanted to try making my own soup. The recent departure of my partner of 10 years has left me with more time, and a need to fill it, but sadly also with only one person to feed. I know you can freeze some soup recipes, but I don’t know how. My freezer is full of pizza and chips- things which come ready packaged. My questions, therefore: How do I get sloppy soup safely into my freezer, how do I keep it in good condition and for how long can I keep it?
I live alone so store lots of stuff in single serve portions. For soup or stews/casseroles I find that zip lock bags are perfect. I use the larger ones. Put a serve of the the sloppy stuff in the bag and hold the top up as you settle it in the freezer as the air come out. Then seal. You end up with a fairly low flat disc of soup that is easy to store and easy to use. Using bags seems to use far less freezer space than any other container.
And I freeze anything at all. Just ladle into the bag while still hot and in the freezer it goes.
Bags are good. Also, go to Costco or Walmart and buy a load of those Glad plastic 2-cup containers with the snap lids. Put in soup, put on lid, stack in freezer. Nuke as needed. Most soups freeze very well. The only exception would probably be anything with chunks of potato or with rice, since potato gets mealy very quickly and rice turns into bloated unpleasantness after absorbing excessive water. A suggestion for those types of soups: cook the starch separately and ladle the soup over it, rather than adding it to the pot. You can also jazz up a frozen serving of soup by adding some fresh herbs after it’s reheated.
Most soups freeze pretty well. Exceptions: things with BIG chunks of potatoes, and a lot of cream type soups look ‘curdled’ when they thaw. Sometimes the curdled ones can be whipped back into shape while reheating, sometimes not. They taste okay either way, but the texture and appearance is wrong.
I like a big bowl of soup, since I use it for the main course along with some bread or salad, rather than as a side dish. Those rectangular-with-rounded corners plastic containers are perfect (I get them free by buying deli sliced meats in them, but Glad sells them.) Also the "pound’ size round containers deli’s use for potato salad and such – they’re sturdier than the rectangular ones, but don’t pack as efficiently into your freezer.
Procedure: ladle soup into container (I generally let it cool down some), leave at least 3/4" empty, and put the lid on very loosely – like just balance the round one on top, or ‘snap’ on two corners of the rectangles. Place carefully in your fridge on a flat area so the soup won’t spill. After it’s frozen (a few hours) put the lid on properly and then you can tuck the container into any convenient spot.
The nice thing about the plastic containers is that you can reheat your soup in them in the microwave, and eat it out of them, too, if no one’s looking. A meal with virtually zero dishes! If you think ahead, you can pull the container out and let it thaw, or just stick it in frozen solid. Remember to loosen the cover when it goes into the microwave.
I should have mentioned that with froizen stuff it is good to remember what fresh herbs and spices you used because adding a small quantity of the same fresh herbs/spices on reheating livens things up and makes them seem new.
I don’t really freeze finished soups very much, but I do make a lot of homemade stock and freeze that if I don’t feel like eating it for a week straight. Which I sometimes do. I use freezer bags like don’t ask does, or else some dedicated containers that I just rotate in and out of the freezer as I use them.
But if you freeze just the stock, then you can whip up all kinds of different soups as the mood strikes. Chicken noodle? No problem. Minestrone? Throw whatever’s in the fridge on in, and you don’t have to worry about it getting mushy. I find pastas tend to get soggy anyway, and put them in at the last minute.
Hmm, I have a turkey in the freezer, and you’ve given me a craving for turkey soup. I’d best get to defrosting and roasting!
Look at the time stamps: your post went in only 4 minutes before mine, that is, while I was already writing. Otherwise I’d have save myself some typing.
Jings, that sounds a bit advanced, I haven’t even made my first batch yet!
Thank you for your help everyone. I have bought some freezer bag thingamies (space-saving benefit over tupperware) and my ingredients and will give it a go tomorrow- of course, my first attempt may be too disgusting to even consider freezing, so the question may never arise…
A good way to avoid having your soup turn out a mess is to make sure that you simmer the stock on a very low heat so that bubbles only break the surface occasionally. This results in any fat floating to the surface where you can skim it off periodically and discard it. Boiling the liquid for extended periods will cause the fat to emulsify (combine with the liquid), making for a greasy “mouth feel”, which is unpleasant. The longer you simmer the stock, the more reduction takes place, and the more concentrated the flavors become. Brown and white stocks are very easy to make, but take quite a bit of time. Note that the type of meat in a stock does not determine whether the stock is white or brown; it’s the cooking method. Brown stocks start by roasting the bones and vegetables in the oven.
That’s a brilliant site, thank you. I have to confess, I bought a stock-cube for this soup-making effort (heck, you have to start somewhere). But my future certainly holds experiments in stock-making- and when I started this thread that’s not something I would ever have considered!
Ooh, you totally should make your own. The difference is night and day, especially if you make a soup that doesn’t have a lot of its own strong flavors. A good stock is worth shining on its own.
It’s a nice thing to do on an otherwise slow weekend day.
Agreed, invest in a big stockpot and lay out a weekend for it and you can have enough stock to last you several months. Once you have that much stock, you find that you’ll start using it in everything and all your cooking will improve.
If you think ahead, you can pull the container out and let it thaw, or just stick it in frozen solid. Remember to loosen the cover when it goes into the microwave.