“The whole point of freezer cooking is that you use recipes that are meant to be frozen.Those recipes are specifically created to make sure that they’re going to be delicious.” And freezing doesn’t take away from the flavour.“People would be so surprised to know that in the absolute top- end restaurants [chefs] prep in advance.A lot of that will come out of freezers and fridges that have been prepped in advance.A lot of things actually taste better if you’ve cooked them in advance.” ‘Grab and cook’:What to prepare ahead, freeze but cook on the day While some parts of Christmas can be completely made and frozen, her methods aren’t about doing that for the entire meal.“We’re still cooking Christmas dinner.We’re just not prepping everything from scratch,” explains Mulholland. “Prepping ahead is really that you’re getting it ready, but you’re not necessarily cooking it.You’re just getting all the ingredients ready together,” she says, for example, mixing the stuffing ingredients and putting into balls, before freezing uncooked, or wrapping the bacon around sausages for pigs in blankets. “In November, I will make the herby butter [to use under the turkey skin] and wrap it up. I’ll get the pack of streaky bacon and put it beside the herby butter. I’ll make my stuffing mix.Then I’ll get my frozen turkey from the shops and I’ll put it next to it. So I’ve really created this meal prep kit that when I bring it out, it’s defrosting, and I know that everything’s there. “Roast veg – you parboil them, cover them in oil, put your lovely seasoning over it, and then you flash freeze it [putting it in the freezer for two hours].You’ve part cooked them.You haven’t cooked [them] to the end and then re-cooked. It’s about prepping everything so it’s ready to come out and be cooked from frozen, but it is being cooked on the day.” Do this for starters and nibbles too, like pork and stilton sausage rolls, and cheese and chutney straws. Cold starters, such as chicken liver pate or mushroom and tarragon pate, make easy freezer items too.
whatever, or I’ll grab a takeaway’
“It’s automatically going to cost you more money – and that’s a normal work day. So you take that tenfold into the busiest December, and you are racking up a lot of money and a lot of stress.” The Batch Lady Saves Christmas by Suzanne Mulholland is published by Ebury Press, priced £25. Photography by Andrew Hayes-Watkins, available now
Batch cook some additional ‘December dinners’
Make December extra easy by making and freezing some nutritious meals you can take out of the freezer whenever life gets a bit busy.Think pork, parsnip and mustard traybake, Cajun-spiced chicken, or coconut and butternut squash curry. “[If you know] ‘I’ve got a fish pie in the freezer, and I’m going to put it in the oven tonight’ – that is the easiest thing ever, because you can make a fish pie in three minutes. But if you haven’t done that, your headspace is ‘I don’t know what I’ve got in the house, I don’t know who’s in or who wants to eat. I’ll stop at the shops, I’ll grab
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