It’s amazing what you can find in the back of your freezer: half-used bags of vegetables and fruit, meat and fish, pizza dough and French fries are likely to be lurking in the chilly depths. In fact, one recent survey showed nearly 17% of people have kept food in their freezers for more than a decade! Whip up your odds and ends into these 30 fabulous recipes, from great bakes and tasty main courses to speedy midweek dinners and snacks.
Frozen peas are one of the most popular freezer ingredients – they're great when used as a side, added to an omelette, pasta or risotto, or puréed for a soup. So this recipe, which whips them up into a super-simple chicken curry, is something a bit different. There are no fancy ingredients required and you can have it on the table in around an hour.
Frozen broccoli is great for fritters. Thaw 300g (10.5oz) of broccoli and finely chop. Then add 75g (2.5oz) self-raising flour, a chopped onion and around 1tsp chilli powder or paprika. Beat two eggs with 2tbsp milk and stir into the broccoli. Fry the mixture in batches, a few tablespoons at a time, until crisp and hot. You could also add some chickpeas, grated cheese or crumbled feta. Top it all with a fried or poached egg and some crispy bacon, and serve it for brunch or lunch.
Making a great pizza topping at home is pretty straightforward – you just need tomato passata, cheese, pepperoni and some dried oregano. So why not try something a little different? A Middle Eastern-style meat "pizza" is topped with a savoury mix of lamb mince, garlic, onions, chilli and tomato paste. It's very simple and makes a great change.
Frozen spinach has a much deeper, stronger flavour than fresh, and it really sings in this 20-minute pasta recipe. Orecchiette means "little ears", and the shape does a great job of scooping up the sauce (though you could use fusilli or farfalle, too). A little cream, garlic and Parmesan brings the whole thing together. You're guaranteed to make it again and again.
Use up your frozen puff pastry in an indulgent Italian pie. This recipe also puts any leftover cheese and ham you have in the fridge to great use – and the only other main ingredient is tomato passata, a staple pantry item. Serve your cheesy pie with a crunchy green salad for lunch or dinner, or treat yourself to a decadent breakfast.
These little onions are rather a pain to peel if you buy them fresh, so they're a great ingredient for the freezer. Their sweet flavour really comes into its own in a classic French beef bourguignon, but they work well in any comforting beef stew recipe. Just add them about an hour before your stew finishes cooking, so they don't completely break up.
It really doesn't matter what kind of bread you have in the freezer – whether it's sourdough, wholemeal or white – an Italian bread salad, called panzanella, is the perfect recipe for it. The bread is re-baked in olive oil, then soaked with more oil, red wine vinegar, tomatoes and peppers. You can add whatever Mediterranean-style ingredients you have to hand. It's a great barbecue side dish too.
Get the recipe for Italian panzanella here
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A chicken pot pie is a must for using up frozen shortcrust pastry. Even better, you can add all those extra vegetables and herbs you've found in the freezer too. The recipe uses a whole chicken, but you can easily substitute it for chicken pieces instead.
You could add a few handfuls of frozen blueberries to your breakfast smoothie, or cook and purée them as an indulgent sauce for a cheesecake. But, if you've a little more time, give this blueberry and honey cornbread a try. It's a very straightforward cake that's loaded with honey and ground almonds and topped with blueberries before baking. You can have it out of the oven in around an hour too.
Even if you don't have enough fish fingers to serve as a main meal, you can bulk them out for a great lunch with these tips. Wrap your breaded fish in a soft flour tortilla with some sliced cheese and salad vegetables – think crunchy peppers, radish and cucumber – and a generous spoonful of mayo. Or try something different for dinner with our tasty fish finger tacos recipe.
Ready-prepared chopped onion, carrot and celery, known as a mirepoix, is the base for many soups, stews and pasta sauces. And it makes light work of preparing a meat ragù sauce, such a bolognese – the trick is just to cook it gently and slowly. The mixture is perfect for speeding up a rich, creamy lasagne too.
In this recipe for chilli and Parmesan polenta, green beans really become the star of the show. The dish is also a great way to use up any polenta/cornmeal that's lingering at the back of the cupboard. The polenta is cooked, before you add lemon zest, chilli, butter and Parmesan (or any strong cheese). It's then fried and topped with the beans and toasted hazelnuts. Basil oil adds the wow factor.
Get the recipe for chilli and Parmesan polenta with green beans here
Carrots are great whizzed up in an easy soup, but why not give your family a treat by making a carrot cake? If the carrots are small, it might be easier to grate them using the grater plate in your food processor, or use the coarse edge of your grater. You can also freeze the cake once it's baked if you have the space.
Get the recipe for carrot and walnut cake with cream cheese frosting here
Make those few sausages go further by adding them to a bean casserole. Simply fry off an onion, add a few cans of drained, rinsed beans – whatever you have to hand – and a can of tomatoes and some passata. Season and simmer to thicken before adding the cooked, sliced sausages for 15 minutes to absorb the flavours. Or you could try this recipe, where the sausages are made into meatballs for a warming traybake.
You could always use up any frozen fish or shellfish with a classic fish pie recipe. But even more impressive is this delicious Vietnamese seafood stew. You don't need any fancy ingredients and you can simply add the fish or shellfish you have to hand. The secret addition is canned (or frozen) pineapple – and we love the signature heat, sourness and sweetness of the finished dish.
An easy pound cake can be made with frozen raspberries as well as fresh. This recipe uses yogurt, ground almonds and lemon so it's super fresh and tangy too. You could also substitute your raspberries for frozen blueberries or blackberries – or even a mixture if you just have small amounts of each in the freezer.
Get the recipe for raspberry, lemon and yogurt tea loaf here
A few handfuls of cauliflower rice can easily be stretched further by making a stir fry, and throwing in whatever vegetables and herbs you have to hand. Just add some soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and a squeeze of lemon or lime at the end of cooking. You could also ramp up the flavours with our delicious recipe, which contains spices, chilli, ginger and garlic. It works as a great rice alternative to serve with a curry.
Turn those breakfast waffles into lunch by topping them with mushrooms. Or try making our recipe for creamy chicken livers and mushrooms on toast, but serve the decadent mixture on waffles instead. If you're not keen on chicken livers, you could substitute them for some leftover cooked chicken or ham instead.
Get the recipe for creamy chicken livers and mushrooms on toast here
Frozen cherries – no need to defrost them – take centre stage in this easy tray bake, with chunks of dark chocolate adding extra indulgence. It's a very easy cake to make, and serves as a lovely dessert when paired with thick yogurt or sweet vanilla ice cream.
A home-baked loaf stuffed with crisp bacon and melting Cheddar cheese will definitely be a crowdpleaser. And even if bread-making is not your thing, you could simply buy a bread mix then add your leftover bacon and cheese to it. Just remember to eat the bread warm, with plenty of butter. This recipe makes enough for four small loaves.
A speedy twist on an Italian chicken Parmesan is a perfect way to use up frozen chicken – and, instead of pasta, this recipe is made with courgette spaghetti. Topped with grated cheese and breadcrumbs and cooked in tomato passata, the dish will be on the table in less than 30 minutes.
Frozen mango takes all the hassle out of preparing a whole fruit, plus it's guaranteed to be perfectly ripe. Great for smoothies and cocktails, mango chunks can also be used in this decadent mango cream cake recipe. Some of the mango is puréed for the filling, while other chunks are left whole – the result is a fabulous mango overload.
Where would we be without sweetcorn in the freezer? It's such a versatile ingredient that's great for chowders, stir-fries, sides and salads. It also makes for really great pancakes, which you can transform into a brunch or lunch dish. Our easy sweetcorn pancakes are lovely finished with pan-fried chorizo and red peppers, with a fried or poached egg on top.
Frozen squash or pumpkin can be mashed, added to a casserole or made into a soup. But, if you've got the time, it's well worth making this risotto recipe, which is loaded with creamy Comté cheese (though Gruyère or any strong hard cheese would work just as well). The recipe also uses fresh sage, which you could equally replace with half a teaspoon of oregano.
Get the recipe for butternut squash, sage and Comté risotto here
Frozen strawberries, when thawed, can be a little watery. But in this recipe for a strawberry fool, they are cooked and reduced down until they're thickened, resulting in a brilliantly intense flavour. Combine them with whipped cream, silky custard and a crunchy granola, and you'll have an easy dessert that everyone will love.
Artichoke hearts, which are very seasonal and time-consuming to prepare from fresh, are a genius ingredient to have in your freezer. And if you have just a few to use up, this recipe with lamb leg steaks could be the solution. The lamb is marinated in herbs and garlic, then charred or barbecued to serve with some honey and kale, with the artichokes added at the end. Divine.
Get the recipe for lamb steaks with artichokes and cabbage here
A creamy salmon tart is a really good way to make a little salmon stretch further and work harder. Although our recipe uses canned salmon, you can easily replace it with thawed frozen fish too. It's made with bought shortcrust pastry, and you could also add any broccoli you have in the freezer, so it's the perfect recipe for using up those frozen odds and ends.
These little croquettes of grated potato are a regular in many a freezer – and instead of serving them as a side, why not use them as a topping for a shepherd's pie or cottage pie? A great substitute for mashed potato, the tater tots will crisp up perfectly on top, and absorb the rich flavours from the meat gravy on the bottom. Adding grated cheese to your pie is, of course, compulsory...
Make a few shrimp/prawns stretch further by incorporating them into an easy pasta sauce. Sweat off some onions or leeks, before adding the prawns, some cherry tomatoes, lemon zest and juice and a pinch of chilli. The sauce isn't hot, but the chilli brings out the flavour of the prawns. The trick here is to use some of the pasta cooking water to make the sauce.