Freezer meals

[Stella]

Some friends and I are going to do a freezer cooking day and I am trying to think of what we should make. We have widely varying tastes, but I think we can find some common ground.

The one thing I thought of so far is a few kinds of meatballs. Asian style, Swedish style and Italian style. It would be easy to mix up a huge batch of meatball mix, divide it into three and season each package differently.

What are some other good freezer meals?

[treehugger]

Spaghetti sauce (I always make it without meat for the freezer, then add meat or not, depending on my mood for dinner), chili, stews, and soups all work well for the freezer. Of course, none of those are particularly summery food, but it's good to plan ahead.

I also love to cook up large amounts of beans (any kind) to have on hand in the freezer, but those don't count as meals, since you gotta make something else (rice, cornbread, etc.) to go with them.

I also make packages of thinly sliced meat in marinade for the freezer. Quick to thaw and stir fry; serve over rice (which you can also freeze, by the way). Examples for london broil, for instance, are an asian marinade (with mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and green onions), and herb sauce (chopped basil, cilantro, parsley, garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar).

Kara

[Gardenarian]

Pesto freezes up beautifully (you can use plastic bags) and this is a good time of year for basil!

Muffins and other baked goods usually freeze very well, for at least a couple of months. I recently made a big batch of blackberry scones and froze (most of) them.

[Rosemary]

My preferred method of freezer cooking is to prep ingredients so that they can be used in different ways.

For example -
cooked dried beans, as mentioned. Much cheaper than buying cans, if you have the space in the freezer.
cooked ground turkey for use in tacos/burritos/enchiladas/pasta sauce/etc
turkey "sausage" - ground turkey seasoned for breakfast sausage, cooked in small patties
poached chicken, in large pieces or sliced and ready for school lunches. The larges pieces can be chunked and sauteed briefly with tamari for use in stir-fry, or in almost any other recipe. Freeze the poaching liquid for soup base as well.
leftover roasted chicken - large pieces for a meal, small pieces in a container for shredding with spices to use as taco/burrito filling.

[fidgiegirl]

Chili freezes nicely, as do many broth soups.

I love to portion it out for lunches. Need to make some batches of stuff.

[loosechickens]

A friend and I used to like to get together and spend the afternoon making homemade egg rolls.......chopping up huge amounts of veggies, frying the egg rolls, then draining and putting in packages for the freezer. Then when you want a quick meal or appetizer, you can take them out and heat 'em up on a cookie sheet in the oven (I'm sure you could microwave them, too, but we didn't have microwaves back then, being purist back to the land Mother Earth types cooking on woodstoves).......

homemade egg rolls are quite a bit of work if you're just making a meal's worth, but if you make a huge bunch, it's hardly any harder, and then they are there, practically instant food, for months, as they froze well......

We also liked to do homemade raviolis in large amounts and freeze on cookie sheets, and then bag them up and dump out as many as you wanted for a meal, from the freezer........

[frugal-one]

I try to keep a lasagna in the freezer. There are different varieties you could make. I also make pizzas for the freezer, as well as, apple turnovers. If you have a "U Bake" store near you .. you could peruse for ideas????

[Anne Lee]

Mark Bittman's lentils and brown rice freezes up pretty well. They make great filling for vegan tacos, especially if you add roasted potatoes.

[libby]

-lasagna
-roast beef and gravy
-beef dip
-beef tips
-stuffed potaroes
-mashed potatoes
-spagetti sauce
-beef tips
-swedish meatballs
-mushroom meatballs
-meatloaf
-plain hamburger crumbles
-various casseroles
-unbaked bisquits
-pizza dough
-unbaked buns
-soups
-baked beans
-cooked rice
-pulled pork
-sweet and sour meatballs
-porcupines

I have made all of the above with great success. I love the convenience of freezer meals.Take a look thru the freezer section of your grocery store for more ideas. If the big food companies can make frozen dinners so can we.

[iris lily]

libby that's a great list. My freezer is empty of meals right now but for 2 dried up squares of lasagna. It's great to have frozen dinners ready.

I tend to make up toppings for rice or noddles. When I get home from work, I put on the noddles, microwave the topping, and it's set.

[iris lily]

loosechickens, I never would have thought about freezing egg rolls, hmmmm, I don't know, I'm kind of a purist with them. In the freezer they'd lose that crispyness of fried food. But maybe, I'll have to think on that.

[Stella]

Great ideas everyone! I will print this off and see what the other women in the group want to do. You've given me a lot to think about! Thanks!

[loosechickens]

Iris Lily, they always remained crisp, BUT I suspect if you tried to warm them up in a microwave, they wouldn't be. I cooked at that time on a wood cookstove, so the oven was almost always going as we used the cookstove to heat the little house as well, so I would just take them out of the freezer, spread them out, frozen, on a baking sheet, and pop them in the oven (about 350 degrees) until they were defrosted and heated through, and honestly, they tasted just like I'd just made them.

We loved homemade egg rolls, but it was such a mess to make them, and then you had all that oil to deal with afterward....after we figured out how to make big loads of them at once, enough for months at a time.....that mess was well worth it.

Ours were always vegetarian ones, but I'm sure meat ones would work as well.

edited to add: if you didn't mind the extra work and wanted that "just fried" taste, you could do them ahead for the freezer, but undercook them (kind of like you'd make brown n serve rolls). Then you could take them out of the freezer, defrost a bit, then finish frying them.....you'd still have the oil problem, but all the rest of the prep mess could be minimized......

[Raziela]

Stella - check out onceamonthmom.com Tons of recipes and ideas there!

[Mrs-M]

Libby. You forgot cabbage rolls! :laff: Awesome list!!! Great lists everybody. May I add hamburger/cabbage hashes to the list.

[domestic goddess]

I'm sorry to display my ignorance here, but what is a "U-Bake" store? Is this something like a community oven?

[Fawn]

Crabby Curmudgeon Here--
I just don't like frozen meals. I will chop and freeze a vegetable like green peppers or onions or celery that I can't use up fast enough...and mix them in later.

have done the monthly cook/freeze meals...have bought frozen crap....

I really, really like the just cooking as we eat it method. My cupboards are usually empty...and I have teenagers who are notorious for eating whatever is not nailed down.

Youngest son grew 5.5 inches in past year....so not malnutriitioned....

We consistently spend less than the Food Stamp Allowance for our family. Dunno....

evreybody has their own method...

[mara61]

Hey Stella,
Not sure how your OMC went, but I came across this blog a few weeks back and thought it might interest you:

http://onceamonthmom.com/

I have not made any of the recipes, but some sound pretty tasty.

Like Fawn, we don't really do any freezer meals. I will freeze leftovers for lunches for my husband but that and freezing chopped fruit and veggies that will go bad, and extra waffles/pancakes when I make them. I did though when I had my hand surgery in the spring, prep quite a few things so that all that needed to be done was pop them into the oven. Prepping with one hand would have been too hard and my husband gets home too late to start dinner.

[ButterflyBreath]

Tater Tot Casserole is my favorite freezer casserole.

[Packratona!]

I bought a bunch of divided plastic covered trays, and am freezing meals for my daughter who is in nursing school. So far, I have made:
Chicken and pasta with broccoli with a basil parmesan creamy sauce
Yellow rice and black beans
Chicken curry with white rice
Sweet and Sour Chicken
Steamed turkey dumplings (Chinese)
Mashed potatoes, gravy, roast chicken, green beans or corn, stuffing
Linguine with Spaghetti sauce made with turkey sausage
A middle-eastern chicken and potato and other veggies dish
Chicken/refried bean enchiladas with a side of yellow rice

The meatballs is a good idea; think I will make some tomorrow.