To think batch cooking is awful

I just made a huge batch of soup, cheap vegetables (mostly carrot, peppers and onions) roasted and whizzed up with passata and herbs and seasoning. Delicious and freezes in bags flat. Quick and easy lunch for future.
I have a box of frozen mince pies, little sponge puddings, curries, meat pies, veggie pasta.
I love a batch cook, makes me less likely to go for UPF junk when I'm tired or in a hurry.

Wow, I love a batch cook. I can take a whole Saturday afternoon batch cooking with a glass of wine and a podcast on. Then lots of meals to see me through a couple of weeks (I live alone).

I'm vegetarian, so maybe that's why I don't taste freezer.

What exciting things are you doing? Other than scrolling through Mumsnet like the rest of us.

I don't batch cook tbh because I find ill forget about it then it'll get left their for ever in theory it would save me time if it actually wasn't for the fact I'm definitely going to forgot it's in their lol

Some people prefer fresh food, not manky thawed out batch food slop.

If this is your opinion then you're either not a good cook or your friends/ whoever gives you this food, aren't good cooks, or you've never had the pleasure of eating a lovely casserole that's been frozen and reheated.

It's ridiculous to say that all frozen food is 'manky slop'. It's only manky slop if that's how it was when it was cooked.

I've been given some lovely cookery books for Christmas, many of which have the comment 'freezes well' at the end of recipe.

I assume you think that professional chefs are happy to eat manky slop?

I hate eating meat that has been frozen so rarely batch cook.

I don’t “batch cook” as such, but I live on my own now and will cook and then freeze additional portions at least a couple of time a week, as well as days when I cook but don’t have anything to freeze. This means I can have nights off fromCooking from scratch but aren’t eating highly processed commercial ready meals. Which , btw, don’t always have a lot of flavour and textures there can be weirded too. It also means I save money- I can still buy larger packs of meat or use up all my veg.

I find it depends what you are freezing. Fish is never good. It does blow out the fibres of the flesh and make it stringy. Anything that requires longer slower cooking in a sauce/gravy works really well. So spag bold, chilli, any casserole or stew, some other pasta sauces. I freeze for things that are a lot of effort to make like lasagne, parmigiana and curry’s where I’ll do side dishes at same time. I also freeze stock, bones etc and left over cooked meat that’ll be defrosted and used in pastas but enables me to get something very tasty but fast on my table.

I’ve never experienced “freezer” flavour 🤨. Unless you freeze in silicone which can be strangely noticeable to some people. But I do get flavours and textures being odd due to how you reheat. Some stuff just doesn’t taste nice being microwaved …anything baked (scones, pies etc reheated in microwave are fowl and I can tell a mile off), and sometimes what you’ve frozen something in could flavour it if you reheat it in that. I freeze and store mostly in bags and will always remove into a suitable dish to reheat once defrosted or if I cook from frozen in some cases. If stuff was made with fresh herbs or spices, I will taste and maybe add more dried of the same to wack flavour back up again, but that isn’t often.

i think what o do is different form these USA you tubers who batch freeze a whole weeks menu in one day, and are in effect mass producing food. I look at what they do and it is all high speed cooking to prep, you’re never going to get anything flavourful in that. I certainly would not freeze veg side dishes (expception is veg curry’s or veg mains like parmigiana and red braised cabbage). I will always use fresh veg as sides. I think there’s a million miles between these hard core batch cooking techniques and what most people do like me.

Saves time and money for us. A double batch of chilli, curry, etc doesn't take much longer to make than a single batch - only really the time it takes to cut double the fresh produce going into it - but it means 8 portions are made and 6 are frozen for later. Those coming out the freezer generally taste better than the fresh portion. Some things don't work well, but that doesn't mean batch cooking as a whole is bad - you just have to think about what will work and what will save you time.
Cheap veg over Christmas gives you a ton of soup for the freezer, at literally pennies a serving.

We only 'cook' at the weekend. During the week, we use stuff from the freezer that has been batch cooked. Makes life simple, means less mess and time taken during the week, and stops any temptation to fall back on lazy junk dinners.

@Newyear2025 But what does ‘ freezer ‘ taste like? Genuine question.

I freeze quite a bit like chilli, Bolognese, stews or curry’s and they always takes better? A lot of them are cooked in the slow cooker and then frozen and they still taste good.

I do get what pp mean about some food tasting different/better when cook on the hob/oven than a slow cooker though!

I batch cook, and I'm a decent enough cook, but I agree. Things are never as good from the freezer as they are when they've just been made. I just accept it and eat more when I first make a batch.

Policing said argument is a far better use of time?

Why the fuck are people choosing an argument over batch cooking as their way to kick off 2025?!

I know what you mean op, tastes different and the texture is off

wtf does taste like freezer mean 🤣 somethings wrong with the food or the freezer if that’s the case.

Yep I’m Team-CanTasteAppliances&Utensils. Adding to your list foods dished using wooden spoons and cooked/baked in silicone dishes.

I had a silicone ice cube tray. Used once and threw away when my G&T tasted of it! Fruits like grapes, berries. need to be covered otherwise I can taste ‘fridge’. Not apples though. I’m fine with apples stored in the fridge.

Batch cooking works really well for me.

It means I can eat well during the week when I don't have time or energy to cook.

It also means I can have a variety of healthy lunches without much effort or getting bored. I much prefer to make a big pot of soup for example, but if I didn't freeze it, then I would be very bored of it by the time I'm finished it.

I batch cook bolognese (meat and veggie), curries stews and soups. I do all these in my slow cooker so it is not a faff, bung the ingredients in then get on with my day. Have a portion of whatever I have cooked for my evening meal and then cool and portion up the rest of it to freeze. Of course I do other stuff like omlettes, stir fry and quick pasta things with tuna and so on but it really helps to have things in the freezer for when I don't feel like cooking. I do label and date stuff and find that a bit of a pain when I am doing it but then feel smug when I am looking through my freezer and can identify what;s in there. I learnt about labelling the hard way, never used to do it and have had some surprises!

Maybe you could go to some cookery lessons locally?

Thanks for posting this, I'm going to try it, sounds great!

As others say some things freeze perfectly well. Delia's sausages in red wine for one and ragu bolognese for another. Curries, fish pie filling and various bean based stews too.

Less so with veg heavy stuff.

After my DP went vegan we were pretty good for a while at making vegan stuff I found palatable but latterly she's gone Tofu mad and I can't stand the stuff. Realised I was getting into a rut of stuff like Kievs or frozen fish with chips.

Worked out a list of recipes I could batch and freeze. Apart from eating better I'm also saving a fortune.

I don't understand why it tastes of freezer. My frozen food tastes perfectly normal unless it's been frozen too long (like a year), and then it tastes odd.
I tend to batch cook a couple of things at the weekend and just put them in the fridge. We'll eat them in the week after work, so we don't have to cook when we're tired. It works brilliantly.

As a single mum to a ND child, batch cooking saves me a lot of time. It means I can give my son nutritious meals quickly rather than resorting ro shoving fish fingers in the freezer. He can't be left alone for long, some days not at all. Big fan of the batch here!

I've made a mixed bean chilli and next I'm going to cook the lamb with onions, garlic, carrots, celery, broccoli tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and lots of spices. Probably cumin, paprika and star anise. 😀 I finely chopped the celery, carrot and broccoli in my food mixer. It adds nice flavour as well as extra veg.

The bean chilli has onions, garlic and chilli sautéed in chilli oil, then added tomato puree, 2 tins of tomatoes, 2 tins of kidney beans, 1 tin of chickpeas, a bag of frozen soy beans, salt, pepper and 3 heaped tsp paprika.

I generally make up my recipes depending on what we have in and what seems nice to me, so no guarantees of authenticity!

Can we please add to to the label ‘batch cook babes’ the terms ‘slow cooker slobs’, ‘microwave mingers’ and ‘air fryer fiends’? Personally, if my chef isn’t available, I’ll stick to the sous vide and the Lacanche range, now that the Aga isn’t de rigueur 🤣

I do spaghetti Bol sauce, a few different curries and chilli (both meat and veggie types), lasagna, pasta bake, shepherd's pie - all sorts. You have to season well, and I tend to make sauces a little less sloppy for the freezer as they come out wetter when defrosted. Anything involving mashed potato, I use powdered rather than liquid milk in the mash. Everything is well seasoned.

Pretty much everything comes out good if you cook it well to start and freeze it properly. And reheat it properly as well.