Cooking Every Meal From the Freezer
There’s something oddly comforting about the freezer. It sits there humming along, full of forgotten veg, emergency pizzas and the strange impulse buys we all make. At some point I started wondering if you could actually cook proper meals using only what’s in there. Not just heat-and-serve stuff, but real freezer only recipes.
So I set myself a challenge. I wanted to cook breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert using nothing but frozen ingredients. No fresh herbs. No sneaky lemon wedges. Nothing from the cupboard unless it came out frozen. I wanted to see if freezer only recipes could still look and taste like proper food.
Breakfast kicked things off in my old kitchen while I stood there in pyjamas. Lunch became a full-on prawn curry fried rice built from frozen bits that clattered into the pan like Lego. Dinner turned into sweet-savoury chaos involving sausages, hash browns and a spoonful of vanilla ice cream. Dessert pulled everything back together with cookie-dough cups and a thick tropical fruit filling. By the end of the day, freezer only recipes didn’t feel like a gimmick. They felt genuinely fun.
Breakfast – Hot Dog Toast Compote & Bao Clouds
Breakfast was filmed in my old kitchen, in my pyjamas, which honestly felt like the perfect energy for what turned out to be one of the most unexpectedly fancy breakfasts I’ve ever bodged together. I toasted a hot dog bun, cooked down some frozen fruit into a chunky berry compote, then tore apart a steamed bao bun to make soft little pull-apart clouds. A drizzle of melty ice cream tied the whole thing together. It looked far more deliberate than it had any right to, and proved immediately that freezer-only recipes don’t have to mean compromising on breakfast vibes.
Lunch – Thai Red Prawn Curry Fried Rice
Lunch was where the freezer really started flexing. Into a pan went frozen aromatics that clattered in like colourful Lego bricks. I melted down frozen curry paste cubes, added frozen prawns, loosened everything with a splash of water and then poured in frozen rice straight from the bag. It fried, steamed, absorbed and somehow turned into a genuinely decent Thai-style curry fried rice. This was the moment I realised the freezer aisle isn’t just a back-up plan; it’s basically a meal kit waiting to happen.
Dinner – Creamy Sausage Hash
Dinner then took everything I’d learned during the day and flipped it into full chaos. I browned frozen sausages, crisped up broken hash browns, folded in spinach, peas and garlic, and then made what can only be described as a questionable life choice: adding a spoonful of vanilla ice cream to create a makeshift cream sauce. It melted instantly, coated everything and somehow created this sweet-savoury glaze that paired bizarrely well with the veg and sausage. I even chopped up a frozen naan, stirred some through the pan and sprinkled more on top for texture. It shouldn’t have worked, but it absolutely did, in that “I’ll regret telling people how I made this” sort of way.
Dessert – Cookie-Dough Cups
For dessert, the freezer finally behaved itself. I pressed frozen cookie dough into muffin tins to make edible little cups, baked them, then filled them with a thick tropical fruit cream made by blending frozen fruit with a touch of ice cream. A smashed blueberry topping gave it a hit of colour and sharpness. It’s the sort of thing you could serve at a dinner party without anyone realising the whole thing started in the freezer aisle.
Fancy Trying More Budget Experiments?
If you like the idea of pushing the limits of what you can cook on a tight budget, you might enjoy my Three Courses for £3 Challenge, which you can find here: https://barrylewis.net/recipe/three-courses-for-3-challenge/
Watch the Video
You can watch this freezer-only cooking adventure above or over on YouTube if you prefer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH1aAy4iraY