Tasty Bites: Adventures in Freezer Cooking

By Beth

Have you ever tried freezer cooking?  Freezer cooking can fit into any lifestyle.  It can involve a very small or a very large investment of time, but this investment that can save time and money on busy days when you do not have time to cook. Stocking up a stash of homemade convenience foods also gives you complete control over the ingredients based on your family’s taste preferences or health concerns. You can prepare freezer meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner and even snacks. Now is a great time to think about doing some freezer cooking to help ease the busyness of the upcoming holiday season!  Here are some common freezer-cooking strategies:

Batch Cooking – Putting together a few meals with the same ingredient. For example, chicken is on sale, so put together several meals featuring chicken and put them into the freezer.

Cook Once, Eat Twice – Plan your meals so that you make two of each recipe. Eat one that night for dinner, put the 2^nd into the freezer for another night. Double the recipe of pancakes one morning that you have time to cook them, freeze the leftovers in bags containing the number you would need for each breakfast and reheat them in the toaster oven or microwave on a busy morning.

Baking Day – Spend a couple of hours one afternoon baking and put the baked goods in the freezer for future breakfasts, etc.

Freezer Cooking in an Hour (MoneySavingMom.com) – spend an hour or two a week to put together meals for the freezer. 

Freezing Meal Components – For example, cook and shred meat in family-sized portions, then pull out them out to speed up dinner preparation. Cook a big batch of beans and freeze them in 2-cup portions to use instead of canned beans in recipes. Prepare meatballs and flash-freeze them on baking sheets, then transfer them to a freezer bag for use in future recipes. Freeze meal-sized portions of spaghetti sauce or other types of sauces. Freeze balls of cookie dough that can be baked as needed.

Freezer Meal Swap – Get together with a group of friends. Have each friend make multiples of one recipe - one for each family in the group. The group gets together to swap meals so everyone gets some variety.

Once A Month Cooking- Block off an entire day for preparing enough dinners for one month. This requires time to plan the menu (or use a menu available online), shop for ingredients, prep the ingredients and then spend an entire day assembling meals. This method also requires adequate freezer space.

Your favorite recipes – Think about how you can use these strategies to stock your freezer with either a portion of a recipe to cut down on prep time or even complete meals.

Are you ready to do some freezer cooking to ease the craziness of the holiday season?  Here are some resources to help you get started:

Onceamonthmom.com – gives a variety of complete freezer menus including recipes, shopping lists, labels and instructions.  New menus are posted monthly and they are FREE.

Moneysavingmom.com – check out her Freezer Cooking in an Hour tab and you can access all of her 1-2 hour freezer cooking sessions complete with recipes and helpful recommendations.  She also has lots of free printables for planning your freezer cooking menus, shopping lists, etc.

Freezerfriendz – full of freezer cooking recipes and tips from a group of friends that meet regularly to do a freezer meal swap

FreezerChicks – more freezer recipes and tips from a different meal swap group

Simplemom.net – She has a few monthly menus that employ the cook once, eat twice strategy and great meal-planning advice.

Google! – Many, many bloggers and websites offer great tips and recipes for freezer cooking.

Beth is a stay-at-home mom of three wonderfully active children ages seven, four and one. She is married to Jason V (who also writes for us here at MAD21) and spends her days teaching, changing diapers, sweeping up Cheerios, stepping over Legos, keeping peace among the kids, and enjoying the creative outlet of cooking.

Comments

[Sharon]

Life as Mom often does a Freezer cooking weekend. She has some great tips on freezer cooking basics, which recipes will freeze well and which ones won't, how to package the food for freezing, and more. She's a great resource: http://lifeasmom.com/features/freezer-cooking-days