Freezer Meals!

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Since DS was born a month ago, I’ve found that freezer meals absolutely, pun intended, save my bacon during the evenings. As in many families, evenings here are when the kids and I have the shortest fuses, which is not conducive to Mommy cooking a meal–at least, not while remaining on speaking terms with hubby, the toddler, or the newborn. 😉

I’ve decided to take part of each weekend and dedicate it to making a large (2-4 meals’ worth in individual pans) batch of 1-2 freezer meals. With DH to kid-wrangle, I can get them done in an hour or two. Then I thought it might be fun to start a thread where we could share our favorite freezer meal recipes…so here goes!

One note: some of my favs are a bit light on vegetables. When that’s the case, I try to serve them with some carrot sticks/fresh fruit/cooked, previously frozen vegetables on the side.

This chicken soup makes a huge batch (think about 9 servings), and is fast, cheap, and high in both lean protein and fiber. DH likes to sprinkle cheese on top of his. I’ll sometimes make cornbread to serve with it. I ladle it into gallon-size freezer bags, which I then freeze flat so as to take up less space.

This is some of the best pulled pork I’ve ever tasted. Like the soup, I just put an evening’s worth into a freezer bag and freeze it flat. Great as is, but also makes good hot sandwiches, tacos, and salad topper. I like it because the meat flavor really takes precedence, unlike more sauce-heavy recipes.

I just made a quadruple batch of these cheesy chicken enchiladas this past weekend. DH ordinarily doesn’t like chicken or beans very much, but he raved about these all evening when I heated a pan of them last week. I do think I may try adding some corn to them next time, and you could substitute beans for the chicken to get a cheaper and meatless meal. I used chicken thighs when I made the big batch yesterday, as they were much cheaper this week.

So, what are your favorite freezer meal recipes? 🙂 Share away!
 
Budgetbytes.com is my absolute favorite. I freeze the enchilada, lasagna, and quesadilla recipes there a lot. She has very good 20-30 minute skillet meals too (which also freeze well, but I like them on weeknights because they’re quick, cheap, easy, and only dirty one pan!)

Linking is really annoying on my phone but her search function is excellent - I freeze the teriyaki meatballs a lot (I cook first). Rice also freezes really well if you need it for something.

Oh, and the Louisiana red beans and rice is excellent. I make it a bit easier and faster using canned beans - I never do well with dried red beans for some reason - but it’s really good.🙂
 
Lentil soup - I don’t have an exact recipe, but it’s pretty much a bag of lentils, 2 cans of chopped tomatoes, and season to taste. A few teaspoons of a smoky spice rub goes well.
 
We like to make big batches of chili, meatballs, and lasagna and freeze them. We also like to cook extra chicken (usually boiled or grilled), cut it up and freeze it, then pull it out for chicken salad, or to go on top of a lettuce salad, or to make a quick chicken alfredo.
 
Not exactly a freezer meal, but I do often use frozen chicken in it. I put 2 small cans of rotel tomatoes (usually the store generic brand) and 1 packet of spicy taco seasoning in the crockpot and mix it together. Then I put 3 chicken breasts on top of that and cook it on high for 3-4 hours. Shred the chicken, add a can or two of black beans and mix it all together, then eat with salsa and cheese on tortillas, taco shells, or rice. My husband and I can usually stretch this out into three dinners. We’ll have the first two with tortillas and then heat the remaining leftovers up with a cup of rice on the third night. (1 cup being what we put in our rice cooker).

You could probably freeze this in a gallon bag and make it a freezer meal, but it’s already really simple to prep.
 
I am a household of one (still seeking a bride ;)).

Not exactly a complete meal, but last year I bought a big ham for Easter Sunday, cut enough for the day’s meals, then froze the rest. In the weeks that followed, I made fried rice with it.
 
Pancakes, using pancake mix from the store, always works well in the freezer for me. I make a big batch on Saturday morning and then freeze portions in baggies. They microwave easily and are edible
 
There are so many great websites to find freezer meal recipes!
Once a Month Meals
Happy Money Saver
The Pioneer Woman
Cooking Light

And darned if I can find the link, but someone has a website where they put up a Costco freezer meals plan (it’s free!), if you’re on a budget…actually, I think there are a few of them out there. Google is your friend on this one…

Beyond that, a few time savers:
  • Frozen pizza. We make crusts from scratch, to fit a gallon ziplock bag. Pre-bake them and freeze. Along with the prebaked crust, we keep a basket full of sandwich sized ziplock bags with single-pizza portions of sauce and of cheeses, and snack sized bags of a variety of toppings - pepperoni, vegetables, mushrooms, tiny meatballs, chopped ham, pineapple…all of the faves. So whether it’s one person or many, you can just grab the # of crusts you need, a pack of sauce & cheese, and then any combination of toppings, per person. If your family loves pizza the way mine does, this saves a huge amount of $, and you don’t have to spend lots of time in the kitchen on the dough (apart from the big dough session to stock the freezer). Grab & go.
  • Easy cookies. Especially in the summer, I hate heating up the kitchen. So I’ll take an hour to make MANY batches of chocolate chip cookies (or any drop cookies), form and freeze rounded balls of dough (we have big freezers, so it goes quickly), and store them in gallon ziplocks. When you want to offer a few cookies as a snack/dessert, grab a handful from the freezer, put on a tray and bake from frozen (a toaster oven is great, as it won’t heat the kitchen as much). Cookies on demand! Plus you don’t have extra cookies lying around calling your name afterwards…
  • Easy banana ice cream. This is so great for saving money, and you look like the Best Parent Evah for letting the kids have “ice cream” so often. blog.thatcleanlife.com/one-ingredient-banana-ice-cream/ When bananas go on sale, snag a bunch of them just for this! I don’t bother slicing before freezing - just stuff chunks in a ziplock.
 
I have done many freezer cooking sessions - usually all day with a friend filling both of our freezers. Love having meals ready to go. I’m doing something different this time around. I have about 8 friends (all empty nesters or the married offspring which made us empty nesters! - in other words, families of 2). We are each making 1 meal , 8 times. We will then have a “cookie type exchange” where everyone meets and leaves with different meals. We’ll split costs so if I make the expensive meal, I’m not out money. Looking foward to seeing how this works.

Kris
 
kwitz said:
I have done many freezer cooking sessions - usually all day with a friend filling both of our freezers. Love having meals ready to go. I’m doing something different this time around. I have about 8 friends (all empty nesters or the married offspring which made us empty nesters! - in other words, families of 2). We are each making 1 meal , 8 times. We will then have a “cookie type exchange” where everyone meets and leaves with different meals. We’ll split costs so if I make the expensive meal, I’m not out money. Looking foward to seeing how this works.

Kris
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A friend of mine and I have done something similar to this in the past…we’ll have to try to meet up again soon!

I went shopping today, and found a good price on chicken breasts. As a result, I made

–a pot of the soup I mentioned in the OP (frozen in 3 bags each containing enough for a dinner for DH and me, plus a lunch for me),
–a batch of taco chicken cooking in the crockpot (same amounts as the soup) to be frozen later,
–and three bags of lemon garlic chicken, now cooling in the freezer. ETA: I browned the chicken and made the sauce, but instead of putting it into the crockpot, I put it into three bags for the freezer; I’ll thaw overnight and put it in the crockpot on a day when I decide to have it for dinner.

Tomorrow’s agenda includes a crockpot full of pulled pork, so that’ll be a dozen healthy freezer meals* tucked away for those always-busy evenings…woohoo! I’ve been glancing over your sites, too, and stored them away for the future. 😃

*For things like the taco chicken, I’ll have the chicken by itself with a side of veggies, while DH and BIL put theirs onto tortillas and load 'em up with cheese/sour cream/etc. Pulled pork can also be eaten alone, while the guys put theirs onto rolls. Flexible recipes like that are key around here!
 
angelic06 said:
I am a household of one (still seeking a bride ;)).

Not exactly a complete meal, but last year I bought a big ham for Easter Sunday, cut enough for the day’s meals, then froze the rest. In the weeks that followed, I made fried rice with it.
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Being a fellow solo ( not seeking anyone; I have My Lord) I tend to make too much so freezing is grand.I eat very simply, no spices and plain English food. Soups are grand made in the slow cooker…simple sweet potato, onion,a small piece of chicken, maybe a carrot or sweet corn, maybe lentils…My illness means if i stand preparing food I am too exhausted to eat it so go figure! Small freezer used more for the chicken I feed my cats and dog raw… so much now I cannot eat either, but there we are… Feeding good healthy families is a challenge. Occasionally I “cheat”… NOT! One of the supermarkets I use has awonderful "reduced"counter and they sometimes have their excellent ready meals at half price ie E2 instead of E4… If i get those I have luxury … and they do a grand simple fish pie too… Got four meals yesterday so am grand for a while now… turkey and ham dinner for Sunday lunch! yum!
 
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