Anyone else find this time of year perfect for batch cooking for the freezer? One winter I tried a version of the Once a Month Cooking plan, but it didn’t quite fit our life. Better for me is to choose a recipe every week or so to make multiples of. It’s nice when it’s truly a whole meal, like the Chicken Pot Pies shown in the photo. In the past, I’ve blogged a bunch of other meals that freeze well. Here are a few:
Mock Cabbage Rolls
Mini Meatloaves Florentine
Chili Con Corney
Sausage Casserole
Salmon Biscuit Ring (would need to make the sauce fresh though)
Easy Baked Beans
Ratatouille (a great fall freeze-ahead when garden tomatoes are plentiful)
Beef & Lentil Stew
Chicken Paprika
Hmm, I think I need to make a bunch of those again soon! Then I went scrounging the Internet and found these sites:
From Freezer to Table is dedicated to freezer meals. Lots of tips and ideas there.
Joyful Mama shared her Top 5 Freezer Meals.
Money Saving Mom comes at freezer cooking from a frugal point of view, which is great. There are links to dozens of freezer recipes on this page, but please note that many of the meals are “regular” meals not freezables. The freezer section starts part way down the second column and includes snacks, etc, as well as meals.
Crystal at The Family Homestead shares some tips for freezer cooking.
Aimee bags up ingredients for slow cooker meals and freezes them! She has lots of tips and recipes. I didn’t know you could chunk up raw potatoes and freeze to be cooked later.
And as an antidote, here is a list of foods that do not freeze well. And another similar list.
Looking for time management tips for a full-on cooking day? Here you go!
I’m not sure about you, but I’m finding it helpful to have all these recipes and tips in one place. But please help me add to it! What is your favorite meal to freeze ahead? Or what’s your favorite batch cooking website or blog?
Oh, I forgot a tip that I really like! I have several small baking dishes (just right for the two of us) and use them to bake the casseroles to begin with. Then I pop them in the freezer. When they’re frozen solid, I remove the casseroles from the dish and ziploc them. So this dish can be used for other things (another batch cooking day, maybe?), but when I want *that* casserole, I put it back in the original dish to thaw and bake. Works great. 🙂
Going to try the Mock Cabbage Roll dish for sure! The beef lentil stew sounds worthy of a go too (minus the mushrooms *gag*) lentils are not given enough credit for how delicious they are.
Thanks for sharing some yummy recipes.
The baking dish tip is a good one. A lady from church used to do that when she made food to give. (usually the frozen meals were given ahead to a pregnant mom) Almost everyone has the medium size casserole pyrex type dish- she would bring the frozen rectangle in a ziplock for the freezer. That way it could be eaten when they wanted but also there was no dish to return!
Yay! I’m glad you found some helpful recipes and tips here 🙂