I tend to make large batches of whatever I cook. This is due to a few reasons, mainly because I rarely use recipes and also enjoy having extra food on hand for friends and family. I recently learned a new trick to help prolong the life of your food by freezing the left over portions! This is done by the use of a muffin tin. How ingenious!
HOW TO FREEZE:
To freeze a cream/blended soup, simply pour the right amount of soup into each individual muffin tin. Be careful not to overfill as the contents will expand once frozen. Freeze.
To freeze a broth soup, it is safe to assume there will be chunks of meat, veggies, etc in the soup. In this case, it will be hard to pour a perfect mix of broth and other ingredients so here is another ingenious idea; Use half the muffin tin to freeze broth and the other half to freeze the ingredients. However, try to cover the ingredients in a bit of broth. Don't worry if it's not perfect. Freeze.
Frozen Soup.
2-3 soup "pucks" would make a nice portion once melted!
HOW TO FREEZE:
To freeze a cream/blended soup, simply pour the right amount of soup into each individual muffin tin. Be careful not to overfill as the contents will expand once frozen. Freeze.
To freeze a broth soup, it is safe to assume there will be chunks of meat, veggies, etc in the soup. In this case, it will be hard to pour a perfect mix of broth and other ingredients so here is another ingenious idea; Use half the muffin tin to freeze broth and the other half to freeze the ingredients. However, try to cover the ingredients in a bit of broth. Don't worry if it's not perfect. Freeze.
Frozen Ginger-Carrot Soup in a muffin tin.
HOW TO GET OUT OF MUFFIN TIN:
For either soup: Place frozen muffin tin in a sink with a bit of hot water. Let the muffin tin simply it in water, sort of like a puddle! After a couple of minutes, the bottom of the tin will become warm. Take the tin out of the water and flip it upside down over a clean counter; this will release the soup into what I call "soup pucks". If you're lucky, all the pucks will fall out.... Otherwise you may have to put the tin back into hot water. OR you can also keep the tin upside down on the counter and bang it a little. haha... This method seems to work nicely for me!
Once all the pucks are out you will want to freeze them. What I like to do is put some into plastic bags and some into containers. I eat the ones in containers sooner than the plastic bag ones. Why? freezer burn will happen quicker on things in open containers and since these are pucks, you cannot fill a whole container without wrecking the puck shape, thus, plastic bags work better to wrap around the puck shape.
Soup Pucks in plastic bags.
HOW TO THAW OUT:
Cream/Blended soup: Place 2-3 soup pucks into a small pot or pan (this amount should be enough for an individual meal). Place on burner on low-medium heat. Wait for pucks to begin to thaw out. Stir. Once pucks have thawed, keep on burner for a couple minutes to ensure all contents are at the same temperature before consumption. Once at suitable temperature, take off burner, pour into bowl and eat!!!!
Broth soup: Place 2 pucks into a small pot or pan. Since these soup pucks have more broth in certain ones, you will need to adjust the amount of pucks to thaw depending on whether or not you want more broth or frozen ingredient pucks (and as well as how many people are eating). You may want to thaw out 3 pucks to get a good mix of broth and veggies/other ingredients.
Place on burner on low-medium heat. Wait for pucks to begin to thaw out. Stir. Once pucks have thawed, keep on burner for a couple minutes to ensure all contents are at the same temperature before consumption. Once at suitable temperature, take off burner, pour into bowl, and eat!!!!
but most of all, ENJOY!!!!!
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