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On a cold wintery day, few things do the mood more justice than a hot bowl of potato soup – other than maybe a cuppa tea or a mug of hot cocoa. The heat of the soup does wonders for how your body feels, and instantly uplifts you. You might not know this, but a bowl of delightfully hot potato soup could have been coming from previously frozen potato soup. This begs the question, can you freeze potato soup? The answer is of course, yes. And we are here to tell you how to do it right.
Frozen potato soup has a tremendous life span, and can be stored for months altogether if it has been prepared properly. If all the work has been done right in the beginning, you will understand why it is so simple to answer “can you freeze potato soup” in the affirmative.
All about how you can freeze potato soup
How can you freeze potato soup: Preparation
First things first, do not use chunky, diced or sliced potatoes for the base of your soup. When you are aiming to freeze it, remember that the cold will affect the potato slices unevenly. If they are thick, the exterior will respond differently than the interior, which does weird things with the water inside. It is simply better to eliminate the problem by pureeing them instead. When the potato is pureed, the entire base becomes uniform, and the issue of change in texture or uneven thawing is rendered irrelevant immediately.
Likewise, other ingredients too respond to freezing in their own way. This has to be kept in mind before you can freeze potato soup. If your recipe calls for milk, cream or other dairy products, do not add them to the soup before you freeze it. Instead, add these products to soup after it has thawed and you have heated the soup for consumption. Dairy products separate out when you freeze them. Furthermore, you can always add fresh dairy to thawed soup, so there is really no need for it earlier.
By the same token, everything that you add to a normal recipe of potato soup once the base has been prepared, you should add after frozen potato soup has been thawed and reheated. The list of such ingredients may include herbs and garnishing among other items, depending upon the recipe.
How can you freeze potato soup: Freezing
When you have adjusted the recipe for your soup and have the base ready, you are set for freezing your potato soup. Remember the obvious, however, do not put anything hot in the freezer right away. It warms up the interiors, and anything else in there will also pick up on the heat. Let the soup cool down on it’s own. If you lack either the virtue of patience or luxury of time, you can put your soup utensil in a larger container filled with cool water to sap away the heat.
Take good care in selecting the containers/bags you will be using for freezing. When people freeze potato soup for a long time, the material of the containers themselves might respond to that freezing, just as we observed with our recipe ingredients. So make sure that you use food grade containers that have been designed for freezing and appropriate for your desired duration.
Leave some empty space to accommodate for increased volume.
Bags seem like an odd choice for long term usage, but they have the advantage over containers in that they take up less space in the freezer. You have to be a bit careful with them regarding spillage though, so when you are filling them use a bowl and put them in a container till the soup actually freezes up to avoid leakage.
And that is it, you are done. The soup can stay in the freezer for practically a very long time, but try to consume it before six months from the date of freezing. Do label your containers with the date to keep track of this.
How can you freeze potato soup: Thawing
Well, thawing works in the reverse order of freezing. Just remove the frozen potato soup from the freezer and keep it in the refrigerator overnight. If you want to speed it up a bit, put the container in a warm water bath.
Once you are done with thawing, you can complete the recipe of the soup, by adding the ingredients we held out on earlier. Milk, cream and herbs go in now while you are heating the base on a medium flame.
On a cold wintery day, few things do the mood more justice than a hot bowl of potato soup – other than maybe a cuppa tea or a mug of hot cocoa
Be careful to only thaw just the right amount of soup that you want for consumption, because freezing thawed, heated soup is not an option.
In conclusion, just prepare the soup for freezing properly to enjoy it over long extended durations of time. To every cold winter day, you have an answer waiting in the form of your soup.
