Freezer Meals Made Easy – Part 1

Soon after getting married, I dreamed of the day when my freezer would be perfectly stocked with meals that I could pull out at a moments notice and be ready to consume with little work.  About a year into marriage I had this great idea that by pinning every freezer meal pin on pinterest that somehow my freezer would automatically be filled.  Nope.  I’ve since almost deleted all of them (I think) thanks to that failed plan.

But as I’ve alluded to a few times, I’ve reached a stage in my life where I actually have time to put forth some effort in this category.  Guess what, it actually can be simple.  Who knew from all those weekend marathon “make 96 meals for 50 dollar” pins? I am no expert, but I’ve learned a few things that have made my goal much less daunting. So for all those that are currently way too busy to figure how to fill their freezer with delicious meals, here are a few tips to get you started that add little or no time to what you already do:

1. Freeze part of what you are already made for dinner. Andrew and I got into the habit of making a full meal that would feed a family of 6 (such as tacos, sloppy joes, lasagna, chicken barbacoa, etc.) so that we would have good leftovers to take for lunch or eat for dinner later in the week.  We’ve since discovered that while this is great for a few days, often times we are cleaning out forgotten moldy containers in a week or two.  Now when we cook a pound of hamburger for tacos, we through half of the taco meat in a freezer bag for a second meal later on.  This leaves enough food for dinner and at least one meal of leftovers AND takes care of the mold issue!  We’ve done this with almost all of our meals that include meat with great success.

2. Freeze unused ingredients.  When we make stromboli, we only use half of the meat and cheese that we buy.  When I make one stromboli, I throw the unused ingredients into sandwich sized Ziploc bags and then all of the packets into a quart sized freezer bag.  Now I have a ready assembled packet of ingredients.  I also do this with the crock-pot chicken noodle soup recipe I recently found (which is a HUGE hit in this household!), freezing the remaining carrots, onion, celery, and cooked chicken in a bag.  I made sure to buy an extra can of corn and cream of chicken soup so that we can pull it out of the freezer and make it any time.  This has also saved us from finding disintegrated vegetables at the back of our fridge.

3.  Freeze bread items already baked while still hot to keep from drying out.  Andrew and I like to make pizza about once a month and we go all out with 6+ cups of flour to make the dough. This makes lots of pizza! We started making a handful of calzones/hot pocket type pizzas that we throw in freezer bags almost as soon as we pull them out of the oven.  When we are ready to eat them, we microwave one for 1-2 minutes wrapped and it is just as moist and delicious as the day we made it.  I also do this with the whole wheat pita bread that I made, so we have a huge bag in the freezer to pull out for a quick snack at any time.

While I included specific recipe examples, these techniques are easily adapted to whatever you already make and eat. What are some of your freezer meal tips (or favorite recipes)? I’m always looking for new ideas!

Oh, and always remember to label the bags with what is inside and the date.  We’ve thrown away a few unidentifiable objects :)

Part 2 will include specific recipes with modifications that take a little more time to put together, but have become successful staples in our kitchen.