Supper Partying: How to Host a Dinner Party For Under $50 Using Freezer Staples

I am a bona fide declutterer in most areas of my life. A shirt I haven’t worn in six months? Straight to Vinnies. Birthday card taking up space in a drawer? In the bin. Too many cans of lentils? Dal’s on the menu all week. But then there’s my freezer, which, contrary to every other part of my home, is bursting at the seams.

Pandora’s box has nothing on the chaos that is my icebox, filled with different bone broths and various “waste” items, not to mention whole meals, sauces and portioned desserts. The next long summer power outage will surely be my darkest day.

One of my chief pieces of advice when it comes to throwing dinner parties is to use what you already have, and trust me, you have a lot more than you think – especially tucked in the dark corners of your freezer.

I challenged myself to make a three-course meal for four people using mostly things deep in my freezer (as well as a $50 budget for any other ingredients). Here’s what I made, along with some advice on what you should save from your day-to-day cooking for prospective hosting.

How to use freezer staples

Peas and corn are two of the most common freezer finds. They make for an excellent addition or foundation of a dish. I love to blend peas with mint, ricotta and olive oil to make a luscious pasta sauce (orecchiette is the best shape for this) or adorn a rich risotto with defrosted peas and crispy pancetta lardons. Frozen corn can be used to make a creamy broth for noodles, tossed through a summery salad with pearl couscous, sun-dried tomatoes and lots of herbs or used to garnish a bowl of buttery polenta.

Most people have potatoes in some form, like hash browns or French fries, in their freezer. For French fries, I like to keep it simple. Moules frites is a high-value, low-effort dish that comes together in less than 30 minutes (you can also buy mussels frozen and keep them in your freezer). Or you can pan-fry any skin-on, bone-in meat – like duck or chicken – which makes for a fancy-ish main.

My favourite things to keep stocked up in my freezer are prawns and fillets of fish. Prawns are so versatile – below, I’ve included a recipe for prawn bisque croquettes that uses both prawn meat and prawn heads and shells (which I always save any time I eat prawns and freeze them for later!). My favourite way to use frozen prawns is in pork-and-prawn wontons, Thai prawn cakes and in aguachile (a raw prawn starter with a coriander dressing, sliced onion and avocado, eaten with tortilla chips). To thaw prawns quickly, I put them in some room-temperature water for 10 minutes.

If you have barramundi or basa fillets, you can thaw them the same way but for 20 minutes. Once thawed, you can either steam them with spring onion and ginger or, to make Julia Child proud, flour and fry them, then serve with caper brown butter.

Another top-tier ingredient everyone should have in their freezer is puff pastry. The options are endless. You could make chicken pot pie, galette, tarte tatin or curry puffs – I could go on. It’s so accessible, versatile and easy to handle. If you have limited freezer space, get the puff; shortcrust will not suffice.

For the true kitchen hoarders, these are the things I think deserve to take up space in every freezer.

• Pan sauces. Sometimes I can’t be bothered to make gravy with the leftover juices from a roast chicken, so I tip it into a Tupperware and freeze for later. It really comes in clutch as a flavour booster in a jus or in any saucy or brothy dish.

• Any and all bones. I always save my chicken carcass (if raw or roasted) and wing bones for stock.

• Vegetable scraps. Vegetable skins, cores, heads are also great for bulking out any stock or jus.

• Excess dough. I like to bake half a recipe and freeze the rest of the dough for another time. (You’ll never regret having frozen cookie dough on hand.) With bread dough, it’s better to bake it all at once and then freeze it afterwards.

• Overripe bananas. There’s only so much banana bread one person can handle. My solution is to freeze peeled bananas and use them in a smoothie or defrosted in a banana toffee pudding. Keep in mind that they release more water after defrosting, so adjust your recipe accordingly.

My freezer clear-out formula

For my three-course freezer dinner party, I followed a simple set of rules: I picked one freezer item that I could use as the main component for a dish (e.g. prawns, shells and heads for my prawn bisque croquettes. I’ve included the recipe below); I made sure I only needed a few other pantry staples to support the rest of the recipe; and I would accept, at most, one or two newly bought ingredients.

I made prawn bisque croquettes with cocktail sauce, a pancetta and pea risotto with chicken stock and peas from the freezer and a sticky toffee and banana pudding with frozen overripe bananas.

All it took was a little creative thinking and I had my cheapest $50 supper party yet.  

Recipe: Prawn bisque croquettes 

Serves 4

Preparation time: 1 hour

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

1 onion, finely diced

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 clove of garlic, minced

500g prawns, roughly diced, deshelled (save the shells and heads)

1 can of whole Italian tomatoes (I like Mutti or Annalisa – or check out Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s favourites)

3 tbsp all-purpose flour

2 eggs, whisked

½ cup panko breadcrumbs

4-5 cups neutral oil for frying

Bechamel sauce

3 tbsp unsalted butter

3 tbsp all-purpose flour

1 cup milk

Dipping sauce

¼ cup tomato sauce

1 tbsp Kewpie mayonnaise

Juice of half a lemon

4–5 dashes Worcestershire sauce

Method

In a small pot, sweat onion in olive oil over medium-low heat until translucent. It should take 3–4 minutes. Season with a pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper.

Add garlic to the pot and cook for another minute. Add prawns and keep on the heat until just cooked through, around 2 minutes. Remove prawn mixture from the pot and set aside.

Add the canned tomatoes into the same pot as before. Crush each tomato by hand before it goes into the pot. Season with a pinch of salt and simmer on low for around 10–15 minutes, stirring often. Add the prawn shells and heads, crushing them with a wooden spatula or potato masher. Let them simmer for 5 minutes, then crush again. Repeat twice more. Use a sieve to strain the mixture into a bowl, pushing as much liquid as possible out with a spoon.

To make the bechamel, heat butter over medium heat in a small pan. Once melted, whisk in 3 tbsp flour until a paste forms. Slowly mix in the milk until combined. The sauce should be thick but not dry. Season with a pinch of salt and a generous amount of pepper.

Fold bechamel into the prawn bisque until it’s all one colour. Chill uncovered for at least 2 hours.

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a small pot. Meanwhile, fill 3 trays, one with 3 tbsp flour, one with 2 eggs and another with panko. Season each with a pinch of salt.

Test the heat of the oil by dropping a few panko crumbs into it. It’s ready when the panko bubbles immediately and doesn’t sink. Once it’s reached that temperature, lower the heat to medium-low. Using your hands, make elongated balls using the chilled croquette dough. Coat the balls in flour, then egg, then panko. Make sure each croquette is evenly coated by tossing it through the panko a few times. Drop croquettes into the oil and fry until golden brown. Season with salt straightaway.

Combine tomato sauce, mayonnaise, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Serve with croquettes.

Food writer and private chef Becca Wang throws good parties. Supper Partying is the Broadsheet column where she brings her tips, tricks and recipes to the table. Keep up with Becca at @supper.partying.