Whole Foods Fast: Double the Recipe

One technique that I use frequently in order to have real food on hand in a hurry is to double up on things that freeze well.  We usually have soup for Sunday evening dinner.  Generally we have a bigger lunch, so we aren't too hungry for dinner, but still need something to fill our bellies until the morning.  Tonight it was Lentil soup.  Instead of making just once batch, I doubled the recipe and put the extra in a pyrex to freeze for next Sunday's dinner.

Two tips when freezing soup:

• Store it in a shallow container.  The soup will cool down faster because it is spread out thinner and you have less risk of food spoilage.  For the same reason, it will defrost faster when you are ready to heat it up again.
• Know how many ladles your soup bowls can hold.  My soup bowls hold 4 ladles of soup for adults, and 2 for the kids.  When it comes time to freeze the soup, I know that I need to ladle out 12 ladles of soup into the storage container (4 for me, 4 for hubby, 2 for daughter, 2 for son).

No Frills Pressure Cooker Lentil Soup:

1. Put all of the ingredients below in pressure cooker and bring to high pressure for 10 minutes.  Let the pressure come down naturally.

1 lb dried lentils, picked over to remove stones

4 carrots, sliced (I cut the carrots in half lengthwise, and then slice them with my 2mm food processor disc.

1 and 1/2 onions chopped

4 cloves of garlic minced

1 quart of homemade chicken stock

2 cups water

1/4 teaspoon rosemary

1/4 teaspoon oregano

4 bay leaves

optional: a few slices of chopped bacon.

2. Open Pressure Cooker up.  Salt & Pepper to taste, add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste.  

3. Ladle in bowls and drizzle with olive oil.  

NOTE: Ideally you soak the lentils the night before you make this.  If you soak them, you probably won't need to add the extra two cups of water.  If you open it up and your soup looks too watery, turn up the heat and boil it down a bit.  If it looks to thick, add some boiling water.

Do you have a favorite soup to freeze?