I’m all about easy meals as the year winds down. It’s one of many reasons to freeze, can, dehydrate, and dry-store homegrown or locally sourced vegetables when the garden produces more than you can eat fresh. Instead of needing to go to the store, you can “shop” in your freezer and cupboards, as I explain this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon.

The soup recipe I share uses frozen vegetables that you can put directly in the pot, without thawing them first. I do thaw the Homemade Vegetable Stock that provides a flavor base, because then the soup is ready faster and has a more consistent texture. Some of my favorite flavor upgrades include dehydrated Home-Smoked Chili Peppers in place of the paprika and Cold-Smoked Cheese for the finishing touch. If you’re just learning how to store in-season produce, make this soup with fresh ingredients now and you’ll have plenty of inspiration to preserve in-season produce when the garden and farmers’ markets are in full swing.

Learn more about easy freezer-based meals and get the complete recipe for Broccoli, Tomato, and Pasta Soup in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

Although I sometimes prepare and freeze whole meals, I mainly keep basic ingredients and versatile sauces and flavorings in the freezer so that they can be mixed and matched in endless variations. Many vegetables, like tomatoes, onions, and garlic, can be simply cut up and frozen. Others retain their flavor or nutrients better if you take the extra step of blanching before freezing.

Foods that I freeze that require more prep usually still have multiple uses. Spread pesto base on pizza, toss it into a soup pot, or stir it into roasted potatoes and other root vegetables. Mix stewed rhubarb into hot cereal, bake it into sweet bread, or serve it over ice cream. Homemade curry paste spices up not just curries but also soups, risottos, and other one-pot meals. Frozen homemade stocks add easy flavor to almost any savory recipe that uses a liquid.

The soup category alone illustrates the versatility of freezer ingredients. Here are just a few other soup recipes on the blog that often have me digging in the freezer. You can find many more freezer-inspired meals in the recipe index.

• 30-Minute Tomato Soup
• Corn and Potato Chowder
• Harira (Moroccan Tomato Lentil Soup)
• Hot and Sour Shrimp and Noodle Soup
• Tomato, Potato, and Garlic Soup

You can also learn more about making soup stocks in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.