Freezer Cooking- Slow Cooker Meals

My sister sent me a link to a blog posting about making slow cooker meals in the freezer beforehand and just popping them out the night before, then they are ready to go in the crockpot in the morning. It looks like a great idea, and the recipes look easy, healthy, and tasty. Also, the author uses recipes that combine some similar ingredients. I think I am going to try a couple. Here is the link:

http://melissafallistestkitchen.blog...ker-meals.html

Anyone ever done this before? Any recipes to add that work well for this type of thing?

Most slow cooker manuals recommend not putting any frozen, raw meats into the slow cooker because they will take too long to come up to temperature. Also, it is necessary to thaw packets like these before putting into the slow cooker, or they just won't cook right - too much of a thermal gradient on the crock can cause it to crack, also.

Rosemary, that is true...I didn't really make it clear in my post that you have to take the bag out the night before and put it in the fridge to thaw.

I am not a morning person at all, so I hate when I have to get up and do the slow cooker prep, like chopping veggies. I guess I could just do it the night before too and accomplish some of the same goal.

Maybe one could use my idea with the crockpot recipes. When I come home from shopping, I always cook all the cut up meat (hamburger, stew meat etc) ahead of time and bag/freeze it in proper portions. It would then be safe to use in the crockpot.

rzz that's a good idea.

I can never turn out those picture-perfect slow cooker meals with meat and veg because the vegetables just turn to grey mush when left in all day to cook with the meat. I know that I can't put veg on 2 hours before the dinner is ready, but perhaps I can cook the meat on day one, freeze, and on day 2 thaw and put in crock on low along with veg .

I suspect that a lot of the photos in crock pot recipe books are actually taken many hours before the usual end of cooking time.
Vegetables are best added to the crockpot 30-60 minutes before dinner, or cooked separately on the stove just before dinner.

We used the crock pots a lot when the kids were younger (and life was hectic!), but rarely used food that we had prepped long before and frozen. Our frozen foods were mostly soups that could be quickly thawed and warmed up on the stove. Most of the time we would prep everything for a crock pot the night before, but keep the meat separate from veggies, pasta or anything else that cooked fairly quickly. Everything went into the fridge the night before. In the morning the meat and broth and whatever else benefited from a long cooking time went into the crock. Whoever got home first would dump in the veggies, pasta and other short cooking time ingredients. We would sometimes cook those on the stovetop the night before if we knew there was something that would keep us all out later. However it was done we always put everything (veggies, starch, herbs, spices) into a single container so all anyone had to do was open it up and dump it in. That worked great when it was one of the kids who was first to get home. Rice was always our trade off. Add it in the morning and it got mushy. Add it at night and it was still crunchy. We finally got to the point of just keeping a bag of cooked rice in the fridge that we could add to anything at the last minute (it went into the single container to be added with veggies).