convenience food that you've only recently discovered

[startingtolooklikemother]

I've only just discovered that you can buy frozen chopped onion, frozen mash and frozen roast potatoes. They honestly have (vaguely) changed my life! What else am I missing out on, what have you discovered.

recently in convenience foods which has (vaguely) changed your life?

Those transparent roasting bags are good for keeping your oven clean, and I seem to get more gravy with them. They're cheaper on a roll as tubes that you just twist tie at both ends. Not exactly food, I know.
After trying frozen mashed potatoes the DC turn up their noses at my version, but it's that or nothing most times!

Just remembered another one: LIDL sponge flan cases with artfully arranged in-season strawberries. A bit of lemony jelly over the top and you've got a great showy dessert for hardly any time, effort or money.

Frozen spinach is my new one. Tried it today for the first time.
I am also a firm convert of frozen chopped onion, frozen garlic, frozen mixed pepers, frozen stirfry veg and frozen Mediterranean veg. Frozen mash is useful (although I sometimes freeze my own, if I've any left over) and frozen flavoured rice is tasty.
I don't have it much, but I buy custard in pots that you microwave for a few seconds, if there's any call for custard in our house.

Bags of fresh chopped mixed veg for speedy soup. Also, brown some mince, throw in the bag of soup veg with a bit of stock, top with a pack of fresh ready potato mash from any supermarket, bung it in the oven for 20 mins and you've got a quick and reasonably healthy cottage pie.

I have never tried frozen mash. Is it really that good?

I also stir fry microwave rice sometimes, with left over chicken and veg. So quick.

I love microwave rice but it is a treat/emergency food only now. DH bought me a Tefal rice cooker after seeing everyone in Japan using them and it has honestly changed our culinary lives!! Takes 30mins, you can cook any type of rice, add stock instead of water, and IT NEVER FAILS. I make extra and quick-freeze the left overs into single portions so the kids can microwave it for a fast meal.

We now eat rice at least twice a week, as well as being able to do sushi etc without the faff of burning the sticky rice on the bottom of the saucepan

Mmmm frozen mash is lovely!

Other convenience foods I like are JusRol puff pastry for a fast salmon/chicken en croute, part-baked baguettes to go with homemade soup, panko breadcrumbs, jars of red and green pesto frozen in ice cube trays to add to a pasta dish.

Frozen mash is nicer than fresh :)

I had Tesco finest pork sausage meat last night for lazy 'homemade' burgers!

OOOO garlic oil. I need to invest.

I stretch all of my mince dishes with a mix of beef and quorn to make larger batches. Meat lover DP has NO IDEA.

fresh mashed potato, when I see it in the reduced section I freeze it. So useful for a quick fish pie. Takes literally less than ten mins to put together a fish pie and wack it in the oven

Frozen yorkshire puddings you get them baked or unbaked the baked take 3 minutes in the oven so when you are plating up bung them in . I use tyd unbaked though take up less room

Higgidy quiches are delicious .
I usually freeze my own mash, I make it with just milk then add lots of butter when heating it up again.
I also freeze rice, straight after cooking - controversial but haven't yet got sick.
Lazy herbs - for parsley. and mint.
Grated butter when making a cake makes creaming butter and sugar much easier.
Oatcakes with peanut butter / marmite as snacks.
Spagetti - cook leave in the fridge and then just revive with boiling water, apparently it makes it more like a complex carb.
If I have lots of dishes I rinse them outside with the hosepipe before washing.
I also hoover the fridge and hob.

Hang on, can I freeze scalia pesto? It always goes fusty half way down the jar, and is so expensive (tried own brands, no good). Ice cube tray?

Mine is not food, but a roll of catering piping bags (they're big and blue) off amazon for £7. Big enough for mashed potato to top pies, don't slip or burst, and you chuck them once done. Use them for everything...no more mess making cupcakes for endless lunchbags.

marking place, i need more quick meals!

The less high end Italian restaurants cook massive batches of pasta to slightly underdone, squidge in some olive oil to stop it sticking then just reheat by dropping a colander full into boiling water. So that makes total sense MrsM

Idstill I freeze pasta with pesto, cream cheese and broccoli for DS all the time and it's fine. The colour might go a bit dull, but the taste isn't affected.

I don't like frozen mash, it's too salty, but I do make double and freeze ice cream scoops of it on a tray. Also chop up all sorts of veg and freeze them and love frozen herbs.

We've had grated cheese go mouldy too, always check before sprinkling it on things.

New to our house this week - Millie's Cookies frozen cookie dough from Iceland, precut, just pop on a tray and bake.

OH MY GOD!

FROZEN GARLIC!

This is genuinely going to change my life! Ocado discontinued the chopped garlic pots you keep in the fridge a few months ago and the Lazy stuff is whack in comparison, so I've been using Garlic Paste which is just not as good.

at the prepped frozen herbs too! No more race-against-time for blackened basil, or giving up and just going to the shop every sodding day to buy it fresh!

My MIL told me frozen garlic causes cancer. It must be true because she read it on Facebook.

I m going to get flamed by someone who swears by grinding their own spices between two stones that they have hewn themselves out of local rock with a silver hammer... but I love Aldi curry sauces - the ones with the pot of spices on the top and the tomatoey sauce underneath.

MrsMarigold when you say you grate butter when making a cake, do you grate it cold from the fridge?

I bought one of them last week Shove and try as I might I couldn't get the pot of spices off the top. So we just used the sauce, but it wasn't very nice.

It's years since I bought fresh garlic, I keep thinking I will grow some at the allotment but there's no point when Waitrose sell it in nice little bags chopped and frozen.

who knows - that would be my only gripe - sometimes they are welded on!! It requires a really short, sharp, slightly painful tug with the ends of the fingers.

They also do a really nice fahita sauce in the same finger-splitting format. It is much more delicious than the ready-made fahita kits which I also love in a wrong kind of a way. I just fry up veg with the powder, add the sauce, and then put hummus and yoghurt in there. The best thing is, DH thinks it requires mad gourmet skillz so it is 0 effort for massive kudos.

Frozen pizza dough from Iceland. Prob way cheaper to make my own but I can never be arsed to and anyway pizza is a quick food for us not a waiting around for dough to rise meal.

I'm deeply suspicious of frozen mashed potato though. I've never had it but I look after DN a few times who has a frozen cottage/fish pie or frozen stew and mash for lunch and the potato looks rank and has a weird texture.

Grated cheese is dangerous.

It's so easy just to throw it onto everything.

Ready cubed and peeled squtternut bosh is the best. Also diced and peeled swede.

Jarred bechamel is good too for lasagnas and the like.

Not a new discovery but those ready cooked roast chickens are a lifesaver too.