When it comes to freezer cooking, it is easy to prepare frugal meals. Many frugal recipes can be placed in your freezer for cooking at a later date. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
- Chicken: Buy a large amount of chicken, divide it into freezer bags with the marinade of your choice, and freeze. The chicken will marinade as it thaws and you will have a tasty dish ready. Just add a side salad and some rice.
- Beans and Rice: Healthy, full of fiber, and filling, beans and rice is yummy frugal meal. No need to make any other side dishes because beans and rice is truly a meal in itself.
- Chili: Prepare a simple chili with cans of beans, onions, garlic, tomato paste and chili seasoning. You can add meat if you like but when it is made right, chili with no meat is very good. You can also add fresh tomatoes and other vegetables like bell peppers. Cook the chili, let it cool, and then just freeze.
- Casseroles: Some casseroles like tuna or broccoli and cheese don’t cost much make and can be frozen with ease. When you make a casserole for dinner one night, make two. Instead of cooking the second one, once it is prepared, put it in the freezer.
- Meatballs: Meatballs are another item is not expensive to make, can be doubled and frozen. You can find ground beef on sale often and can buy it in bulk in wholesale stores. With meatballs you can make different types to freeze like simple ones for spaghetti, honey barbecued, or teriyaki.
- Taco or sloppy joe meat: Who doesn’t love tacos or sloppy joes? Again you can get hamburger meat in bulk. The good thing about these frugal meals is that you can cook them or just prepare them and freeze. It really makes creating fun, great, quick meals simple and very feasible.
- Soups: Some soups like chicken noodle or split pea can be frozen successfully. You want to be careful freezing soups with potatoes or cream in them. These types of soups do not always freeze well and will make for a gummy, mushy meal for the family.
Freezer cooking can not only be frugal but time saving, convenient, and really easy to do.
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Make “Northern BBQ”. Put a boston butt (pork) in your crockpot with water, and cook it until it shreds easily (I even just throw mine in there frozen).Place meat on a platter, remove any obvious fat, and shred meat. Put in a bowl and add bottled BBQ sauce. Freeze in qt. size ziploc bags. Freezes well for 4-6 months (if it lasts that long!).
I do my freezing opposite of you. I cook more in the summer to have meals for football season!
When I don’t have time for freezer cooking, I do the “double method”, usually with soups, pot pie filling, and if I have enough leftovers from a meal like peers and sausage with rice, I combine it and freeze like a casserole.I also double pancakes&french toast which reheat in the toaster.
A note about the taco/ sloppy joe meat. I will cook up 10-12 lbs. at a time of very lean hamburger (which doesn’t need to be drained). After it’s cooked I put 1/3 in a bowl to cool and put in qt. freezer bags to use to make quick meals latet. I put about 1/2 of what’s left in another pot, and season for taco meat, and finally make sloppy joes with what’s left in the original pot. I end up with 8-10 meals in under 40 minutes.
WOW! Never thought of this…duh! Sometimes the simplest things escape us! I will do this!!!
What type of pot/pan holds that much meat? I need one!
For a twist on Freezer Cooking, try a co-op! Saved you time because you only cook one kind of meal at a time, but you still end up with a variety in your freezer. We created teams of 3 for freezer cooking at our church. 1 person has beef, 1 person has chicken, and the third person has “other” which can be meatless, turkey, pork, etc. Each team member makes 3 different recipes in their category and makes 3 of them. She keeps 1 and on the last Sunday of the month we bring coolers to church and swap. We start each month with 9 meals in the freezer, but we only had to make one type of meal and only 3 different recipes. So far it’s worked out great!
I love cooking for my freezer but will someone please give some advice on the best way to thaw things out well? I have frozen roasted chicken, grilled chicken, casseroles, etc, but it seems the thawed and reheated product is always dry or part steaming/part frozen. Any ideas on what I’m doing wrong?
To Kelly—When I freeze roasted chicken or turkey, I pour over it chicken broth. It keeps it moist and I have some juice for a bit of gravey. Hope this helps.
I like to crockpot a roast, shred and freeze in a square muffin tin with the remaining juices, remove and wrap for the freezer. They are portions size, juicy and easy to add to a small, quick meal. There is only two of use so it is such a perfect size. We will change it up per serving since I don’t season the meat. Tacos, BBQ sandwich, mix it into black and white rice, use cold on a salad, endless ideas really.