Four foods to find in your freezer when you need fixings fast!
Mixed sliced peppers - Whole peppers are god damn expensive. If you’re making a salad, get the good sweet peppers. If you're cooking, go to the frozen aisle and grab a bag of these bad boys. They’re usually cheaper than buying fresh, and the burst of colour you get by simply throwing a couple of handfuls in your dish is unrivaled.
Spinach - Nobody loves the bag of fresh spinach wilting in the fridge. No matter how much you try to use, there’s always more and it’s getting slimy in there. But chucking a lump of frozen spinach in a pan? You never have to worry about a time limit! And it’s already been condensed, so you’re getting much more spinach in the space! She’s a good source of iron and fibre, and she goes well in everything from scrambled eggs to curry. We love you, frozen spinach.
Diced onions - We don’t buy these often now but when my partner was a less confident cook, having pre-chopped onions ready to go whenever removed a significant barrier to cooking. Chopping an onion is, in fact, difficult! The fucker is round, the layers start shifting under the knife, and it fights back the whole time by making you cry. I mostly prefer the flexibility of chopping fresh onions as needed (the shape matters! It does!) but damn, there sure are times where I don’t have the energy to deal with chopping an onion and then washing up the board and knife when there’s nothing else to cut up. Frozen diced onion gets me through those dark hours.
Cooking bacon/bacon ends - Bacon is a great seasoning but it’s not worth buying and cutting up rashers. Fortunately, some supermarkets sell the trimmings off cheap as “cooking bacon” and it’s worth the prep work to make it a freezer ingredient. Get a pack, open it up and chop the pieces down further. Put a sheet of plastic wrap on a baking tray, then spread your bacon bits over it. Put another sheet of plastic wrap over the top and press some dividing lines in (i like to split a 1kg pack into eighths) then pop the tray into the freezer overnight. Take it out the next day and snap the bacon sheet into portions, then put them in a freezer bag with some baking paper or plastic wrap to keep the blocks separated. When your recipe calls for bacon, just take a lump out and fry it up.
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