- Frozen vegetables are a fast, budget-friendly way to add nutrition and color to soups, stews and curries.
- Their softer texture works best in brothy or saucy dishes, where simmering helps them blend right in.
- Because most frozen veggies are unseasoned, taste and adjust with herbs, salt or acid to make flavors shine.
At thirteen, when my peers were becoming obsessed with playing video games and reveling in music their parents hated, I spent most of my outside-of-school time looking after my little sister and baby brother. Our parents worked long hours from their respective home offices, and I was frequently entrusted with singing the little ones to sleep, inventing amusing games for them to play and, most important, feeding them.
Packaged ramen was one of our favorite fast lunches, and over time, I became convinced that my “recipe” for the noodle soup was the pinnacle of cookery, a fact that I bragged about to my peers. (“You got a brand new Nintendo? Well, I make the best ramen in the whole world.”)
My “secrets”? Adding the spice packets to the water prior to the noodles—so they could soak up the savory, salty seasoning as they softened—and mixing in a carefully chosen selection of frozen vegetables: beef soup might be augmented with sweet peas and carrots; chicken could be fancied up with frozen spinach and mushrooms; and pork paired perfectly with sweet little corn niblets.
Nowadays, I make my soup stocks from scratch but still use frozen veggies when cooking flavor-packed dishes that are brothy or saucy. Thanks to my garden and the abundance I preserve from local farm stands, I have plenty to choose from.
The Secret
One of the best and simplest ways to spruce up a soup, stew or curry is to add frozen vegetables. Why? Because frozen vegetables are conveniently already prepped, and in these dishes, the frozen-then-thawed softness is an asset.
Add the frozen vegetables toward the end of the cooking process, since all they need is to get nice and hot, and make sure to reseason the dish thereafter. I like to taste several times, adding bits of salty and acidic ingredients as I go, until whatever I’m making tastes balanced. Then I’ll layer in other flavorful ingredients, such as herbs and spices.
As always, make sure that the particular vegetables you’re using are a great flavor match for the dish you’re making: lima beans are a natural fit for ham soup; mushrooms would be perfect in Hungarian paprikash; corn is common in miso-based ramens.
Another way to benefit from the texture of frozen veggies and have an easy avenue for maximizing flavor is to whip up a puréed soup. Baby garden peas, sweet corn, carrots or spinach are excellent candidates for this treatment.
Cover the vegetables with homemade or store-bought broth and simmer until tender (which shouldn’t take long), puree with an immersion blender and add seasonings to your heart’s content. If you like, you can also add some heavy cream.
Why Use Frozen Vegetables?
For folks trying to get meals on the table quickly, frozen vegetables are a convenient, budget-friendly way to cook quickly and with less labor, since there’s no washing, peeling or chopping to do.
Because the vegetables used in frozen commercial products are harvested at peak ripeness and frozen quickly—ideally, the same is true of home-frozen vegetables—they may even be more nutritious than a head of broccoli or a bunch of carrots that has been shipped cross-country then languished for days at the supermarket.
And being able to draw on a wide variety of long-lasting frozen ingredients can make it easier to get creative at dinnertime without a trek to the grocery store.
Things to Watch For
It’s true that freezing changes the texture of vegetables. Because water expands when it freezes, the cell walls within the vegetables are ruptured in the process, and when they’re thawed, they will be soft. This texture works perfectly in soups or stews where veggies would cook and soften anyway.
Also, whereas it’s common to season raw vegetables as soon as they hit the pan, and continue seasoning them as they cook to develop deep flavor, most plain frozen vegetables are fully cooked but totally unseasoned. This means that while you don’t need to do any prep work, you do need to work to make the veggies delicious by seasoning during the cooking process.
The Bottom Line
Frozen vegetables are an easy way to add nutrition, color and flavor to soups, stews and similar dishes. Because freezing softens the texture of vegetables, frozen veggies work well in these dishes, where tenderness is a goal. They’re also an easy way to add lots of vegetables to a dish with very little prep work.
Because frozen vegetables are generally unseasoned, you may need to season the soup or stew with more salt or acid or add some fragrant herbs to punch up the flavor. Or simply use the frozen vegetables in flavor-packed dishes like chilis or curries. Regardless of what you’re making, taste and reseason after bringing the vegetables up to temp.
Lastly, be sure to consider what vegetables pair best with the dish you’re making. Frozen vegetables are the shortcut your soups have been waiting for.
