Silicone Freezer Tray Review — Souper Cubes 1-Cup Best for Soup?

Souper Cubes Silicone Freezer Tray Review (2026) — Worth Four Times the Price?

Batch cooking fails at the freezer, not at the stove. A pot of soup gets made, poured into whatever containers are in the cupboard, and then sits in the freezer as three differently shaped blocks that nobody can identify or stack. Two months later they get thrown away. The cooking was never the hard part; the portioning and the retrieval were.

A silicone freezer tray solves that by making every portion the same known size and the same known shape. Souper Cubes is the version that started the category: platinum-cured silicone, a steel-reinforced rim so a full tray does not fold in half on the way to the freezer, one-cup wells with half-cup fill lines, and a fitted lid. Two trays cost around $40, which is four times what a generic set costs, and the 4.8-star average across nearly 23,000 ratings is the reason people pay it.

In short: the silicone freezer tray earns 8.8/10 from the SoftPickr team. The rest of this review sets out exactly how that score was reached.

Key Specifications

Published specifications for the silicone freezer tray, taken from the manufacturer listing.

Everything that follows is based on those published figures for the silicone freezer tray, together with aggregated owner feedback from verified buyers.

Why a Steel-Reinforced Silicone Freezer Tray Behaves Differently

Fill a generic silicone mould with a litre of hot soup and try to carry it across the kitchen. It folds along its own length, the liquid runs over the divider between wells, and you arrive at the freezer with one large frozen slab instead of four portions. That single failure is what the steel rim is for, and it is the clearest difference between this and a five-dollar mould.

The reinforcement runs around the top edge, so the tray stays rigid when full and flexes normally at the base when empty. You still get the property that makes silicone worth using — the frozen block pops out with thumb pressure from underneath, no hot water, no knife — but you get it without the carrying problem.

The other structural detail is the well shape. Each one is a slightly tapered rectangle rather than a cube, which is what allows a frozen portion to release cleanly, and it means the resulting blocks stack like bricks in a freezer drawer rather than rolling around like the discs a round mould produces.

Portioning, Fill Lines and What One Cup Is Actually For

The half-cup and one-cup fill lines are moulded into the well in both US and metric units, which turns the tray into a measuring device as well as a container. Ladle to the line and every portion is a known quantity, which is the difference between a freezer full of soup and a freezer full of meals you can plan around.

One cup is the useful size for most of what people freeze: a single serving of soup, a portion of chilli or ragu for one, a cup of stock for a risotto, a batch of baby food, or exactly the right amount of leftover rice. The half-cup line covers stock reductions, pesto, and the two-tablespoon-times-four quantities that recipes ask for and nobody wants to defrost a litre for.

Souper Cubes also sells half-cup, two-cup and two-tablespoon trays. If you are buying one size only, the one-cup tray is the right first purchase, because it can do half-cup portions using the fill line and the larger sizes cannot do the smaller ones.

Freezer to Oven: The Range That Justifies the Price

Rated to 415 °F without the lid, the tray goes from freezer to oven directly, which very few storage containers do. In practice that matters less for reheating soup — a pan or the microwave is quicker — and a great deal for anything you want to bake from frozen, from egg bites to portioned lasagne.

The lid is a genuine lid, not a stretch cover: it seals well enough to prevent freezer burn on a portion stored for a couple of months and to stop a tray of stock absorbing the smell of whatever is next to it. Stacking trays with lids on is stable, which is not true of foil and clingfilm.

The practical routine most owners settle into is to fill and freeze, then pop the four blocks out into a labelled zip bag and put the tray straight back into service. Two trays gives you eight portions in a cycle, and the trays themselves never end up as long-term freezer furniture.

Limitations and Compromises

No product is without compromise, and the silicone freezer tray has a few worth knowing before you buy.

The price is the obvious one. Forty dollars for two trays is four times what a generic silicone freezer tray costs, and the generic version will freeze soup perfectly well if you are prepared to slide it onto a baking sheet before you carry it. What you are paying for is the rim, the fill lines and a silicone formulation that does not develop a smell.

Silicone absorbs odours if it is used for strongly flavoured food and washed lukewarm. Curry, garlic-heavy sauces and anything with a lot of turmeric will leave a trace. It comes out with a hot dishwasher cycle or a bake at 250 °F for fifteen minutes, but you have to actually do it.

And the trays take a lot of freezer space while they are in use. Four wells across a footprint of roughly 11 by 6 inches is not efficient storage; it is efficient portioning. If your freezer is a small under-counter drawer, the fill-freeze-decant routine is not optional.

Cleaning, Freezing and Getting the Best from It

Getting the best out of the silicone freezer tray over a long life comes down to a few simple habits.

Fill to the line rather than to the brim. Liquids expand as they freeze, and a well filled past the one-cup line will dome over the top and fuse to its neighbour, which loses you the clean separation that is the whole point.

Freeze uncovered for the first hour if you can, then fit the lid. Putting the lid on a tray of hot liquid traps condensation that turns into a layer of ice on top of the portion, which is the most common cause of a portion that will not release cleanly.

Wash hot. Silicone is dishwasher safe and the top rack is fine, but a cool eco cycle is what leaves grease film and odour behind. If a tray does pick up a smell, a plain bake at low temperature clears it faster than any detergent.

Who Should Buy It?

The silicone freezer tray suits some households far better than others. It is a clear buy if you recognise yourself here:

• You batch cook and want portions you can actually plan meals around
• You make stock, sauces or baby food in quantities larger than one meal
• You have lost food to unlabelled, unstackable freezer containers
• You want to bake or reheat from frozen without transferring the food first
• You cook for one or two people out of recipes written for four

The silicone freezer tray is the wrong purchase if any of the following apply:

• You only freeze the occasional portion and a takeaway container does the job
• You have a small freezer where a tray cannot sit flat while it sets
• You want the cheapest workable option, where a generic tray on a baking sheet is fine
• You need larger single portions, in which case the two-cup version is the right tray

SoftPickr Verdict

This is the rare kitchen product where the expensive version earns the difference. The steel rim turns a floppy mould into something you can carry full, the fill lines turn storage into portioning, and the oven rating removes a transfer step. Nearly 23,000 ratings at 4.8 is an unusually strong consensus for a product that costs four times its nearest alternative.

It falls short of a nine only on price and on the freezer footprint it occupies while a batch is setting. Both are real, and both are worked around by the same fill-freeze-decant routine that most owners adopt within a fortnight.

SoftPickr score for the silicone freezer tray: 8.8/10. The best-executed version of a simple idea, priced accordingly. SoftPickr buys and tests independently and earns a commission from qualifying purchases, which never affects the score.

Current pricing, the other well sizes and the full colour range are on the listing for Souper Cubes 1-Cup Freezer Molds at Amazon. For how long frozen portions actually stay good — which is a quality question rather than a safety one below 0 °F — the FoodSafety.gov cold food storage charts give the reference figures.

Frequently Asked Questions

The questions buyers ask most often about the silicone freezer tray, answered plainly.

How long does soup keep in a silicone freezer tray?
Frozen solid at 0 °F or below, soup stays safe indefinitely; quality is the limiting factor and two to three months is the usual recommendation before texture and flavour drop off. Decanting frozen blocks into a sealed bag extends the good period noticeably.

Can the trays go straight from freezer to oven?
Yes, to 415 °F with the lid removed. Go from the freezer to a cold oven rather than a preheated one where you can, which is gentler on the silicone and gives a more even result on anything dense.

Do frozen portions actually pop out cleanly?
They do, provided you filled to the line rather than over it. Push up on the base of each well with a thumb; if a portion resists, thirty seconds under a cold tap on the outside of the tray releases it without melting the surface.

Are the cheaper generic trays good enough?
For freezing, yes. What they lack is the steel-reinforced rim, so a full tray has to be carried on a baking sheet, and most do not have moulded fill lines. If those two things do not bother you, the saving is real.

Related Reviews

If the silicone freezer tray is not quite the right fit, these SoftPickr reviews cover the nearest alternatives.

• Ninja FrostVault Cooler review — keeping portions cold away from home
• Tafura Bread Box review — the counter-top half of food storage
• Magnetic Measuring Spoons review — measuring before the freezing

Last updated: 28 August 2026. Pricing and availability for the silicone freezer tray change frequently; check the retailer listing for the current figure.