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TIPS ON DEFROSTING

Many meals in this book can be cooked from frozen – just check the bottom of each recipe for instructions, though in general it will take 50 per cent longer than cooking from defrosted.

As a rule, I don’t cook chicken from frozen. From a safety standpoint, raw chicken should not be cooked from frozen at all. Chicken that has been frozen cooked can, in theory, be safely cooked from frozen, but I still prefer to defrost it first and make sure it’s piping hot before serving, and advise you to do the same.

There are three main ways to defrost food:

IN THE FRIDGE

Current guidelines recommend defrosting food in the fridge overnight. It is best to put thawing food in a dish to catch any water run-off. Defrosting in your fridge can take a long time, especially if you have frozen something in a large container. With this in mind, I like to combine this way with the water method, below.

IN COLD WATER

Make sure that the container your frozen food is stored in is watertight, then place it in a basin of cold water (never use hot!) Doing this speeds up the defrosting process. And makes for a very quick defrost if you have frozen meals flat in freezer bags.

IN THE MICROWAVE

Most microwaves have specific defrosting programmes, so just follow the manufacturers’ instructions for your specific brand, remembering to stir your food a few times as it defrosts.

TAKING THINGS OUT OF THE FREEZER

I get so many messages from people asking how I remember to remove meals from the freezer. The secret is to make it a regular part of your daily routine. I set a reminder alarm on my phone that goes off at 6pm (the time that I serve dinner every evening) – I’m in the kitchen anyway, so I simply grab the next night’s meal out of the freezer when the alarm goes off.

STORING MEALS IN THE FRIDGE

Once cooked, most meals will last for 3–4 days in the fridge, so, if batching at the weekend, you can keep the meals for the first half of the week in the fridge, then freeze the remainder.

If you have defrosted a meal you should eat it within 24 hours of it being fully defrosted

SMALL FREEZER STORAGE

You can still batch cook even with a small freezer! If you’re challenged for space, I suggest freezing meals flat in bags, you may have to fold the bag over slightly to get it to fit into the drawer space, but you can store a lot of bags in this way. In a three-drawer freezer, I keep one drawer for frozen veg and herbs (and ice cream!), then the other two drawers are free to fill with batched meals.