When frozen veggies are better than fresh

Apart from frozen peas we tend to be a bit sniffy about frozen veg. True, they don’t always taste as good as fresh ones (though there are ways of getting round that) but they’re generally a great deal cheaper especially in comparison to fresh veg that are out of season. And they also, of course, take less time to prepare.

Take spinach. Unless you’re planning to make a spinach salad in which case you may be prepared to shell out the £1.27 that Sainsbury's is currently charging for a 225g bag of young leaf spinach (roughly enough for two), you’d be better off buying a kilo bag of their frozen chopped spinach for £1.29 - enough for 6-8 helpings. You just shake out what you need and warm it through in a covered pan over a low heat with a bit of butter or olive oil and garlic.

Peppers are even cheaper. 500g of frozen sliced peppers will cost you 69p, slightly less than you’d pay for a whole pepper in many supermarkets. Not so good if you want raw peppers, admittedly but if you’re adding them to a stirfry or making a pasta sauce they’re fine.

Other frozen veg I like are broad beans and sweetcorn (though there’s no point buying it frozen at the moment while sweetcorn is in season) and, so long as you don’t boil them - green beans and sprouts. In fact that’s the crucial thing to remember: If you want frozen veggies to taste good don’t cook them in loads of water. Heat them through slowly with a little butter or oil and a couple of tablespoons of stock (or 1/2 teaspoon of Marigold vegetable bouillon powder and 2 tablespoons of boiling water) and no-one will know they’re not fresh.