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.

USING CUPS

      Throughout this book you will see that the measurements for ingredients are listed in cups first. I use cups for one reason only – they make cooking faster! They can also be used for stirring and even serving up a meal. I have also included gram and millimetre measurements in my ingredients lists, but for reference volume equivalents for cups are listed, right:

       1 cup/240ml/16 tablespoons

       ¾ cup/180ml/12 tablespoons

       ⅔ cup/160ml/11 tablespoons

       ½ cup/120ml/8 tablespoons

       ⅓ cup/80ml/5½ tablespoons

       ¼ cup/60ml/4 tablespoons

      PORTIONING MEALS WITH CUPS

      Doubling or tripling a recipe is a great way of working when you are batch cooking, and is something I recommend, but, when faced with an enormous vat of food, it can be difficult to gauge how many people it will actually serve.

      Using measuring cups to portion out meals can help with this. The general rule is that one level cup of scoopable food (Bolognese/curry/stew etc.) will feed one adult, whereas half a cup should be enough to feed a child under 10 years old.

      FROZEN VERSUS FRESH

      As I covered earlier in the introduction, I am a big fan of ‘cheat’ ingredients to save on time. My most commonly used are frozen onions, garlic, sliced peppers and spinach. If you would rather use fresh, simply use the chart below to work out how much of each ingredient you will need.

      POULTRY

       Versatile, quick to cook and liked by everyone, chicken is a mainstay ingredient of any busy family cook. In my house, it keeps even the fussiest of appetites happy and is the protein that I cook more than any other. In this chapter you will find lots of simple, delicious recipes for meals made with chicken that can be prepared ahead of time and pulled out of the freezer as needed.

       As with all the recipes in this book, each meal is paired with another, so you can easily batch two dishes at once – making one for now and one for later. At the end of the chapter you’ll find a plan for cooking ten delicious chicken recipes in one hour, making it possible to make two weeks’ worth of delicious chicken-based dinners in just 60 minutes!

CHICKEN, ASPARAGUS & EMMENTAL PARCELS

      P

       These delicious parcels are perfect for those days when you want the comfort of a pie, but don’t have the time or energy to make one. They can be assembled quickly in advance and then cooked directly from frozen. If you’re vegetarian or trying to cut down on meat, these are just as delicious made with mushroom soup instead of chicken.

      PREP: 15 MINUTES

      COOK: 25 MINUTES

       SERVES 4

      2 sheets ready-rolled puff pastry

      1 × 295g can condensed cream of