The Reason You Should Skip Freezing Pasta And Noodle Soups

Having a freezer stocked with delicious soups is a slice of heaven. Chopping vegetables and simmering for hours can certainly be an investment of time, but knowing you can work a busy day and still have a completely homemade meal just by reheating your made-ahead soup makes that investment worth every minute. And, soups can give you a taste of any cuisine, like our Thai-inspired chicken noodle soup or our Mexican rice soup.

While filling your freezer with a variety of soups is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, some soups — and some ingredients — freeze better than others. For example, cream-based soups can be tricky to freeze as they can end up with an unpleasant grainy texture when they're reheated. There are hacks for freezing soups that contain dairy, like adding it after you've thawed the soup, as My Recipes notes. But, if you're considering freezing a soup that contains pasta or noodles, here's what you should know. 

Freezing noodle or pasta soups can turn your noodles into a mushy mess, warns Kitchn. Pasta just doesn't hold up well in frozen soups, as Carlsbad Cravings notes, but don't despair. There's a simple fix that means you can still have perfect soup reheated from frozen; you just need to add one easy step.

If we're talking about chicken noodle soup, all the ingredients — broth, chicken, and vegetables — will freeze beautifully except for the noodles. The solution is to make the soup without the noodles and simply add freshly cooked noodles after you've reheated the soup. That way you have every ingredient cooked to perfection and no mushy noodles. This strategy works for any soup that contains noodles or pasta, like our savory chickpea and orzo soup or our slow cooker minestrone soup. Just thaw your soup, reheat it, add your freshly cooked pasta, and you have a homemade dinner in minutes.