If you’ve read my freezer cooking guide, you know that I tried Once a Month Cooking (OMC), but it just didn’t work for me. Instead I’ve developed a system of cooking and freezing meals on an ongoing basis and then pulling them out for dinner whenever we have an extra busy day (or I just don’t feel like doing much cooking).
I came across the article below and was glad to see that I wasn’t the only OMC drop out. I hope you’ll enjoy Peggy’s freezer cooking tips as much as I have.
Confessions of a Once-A-Month-Cooking Drop-Out
By Peg Baron
Okay, I admit it. I’m a Once-A-Month-Cooking drop-out. I tried to make a month’s worth of meals for the freezer, but I couldn’t come up with enough time or enough meals. Next I tried to make 2 weeks of meals for the freezer and stopped because I ran out of dishes, freezer bags, and patience. I had good intentions, but I’m just not that organized.
Even though I flunked OAMC, my freezer is not empty. I do have a few tricks up my sleeve that I’d like to share.
Buy hamburger in bulk. I usually get about 7-8 pounds at a time. Divide the hamburger out into 1 pound increments, wrap in foil, and store in the freezer for later use when hot-off-the grill hamburgers sound good. Brown the rest of the meat with some chopped onions, drain the grease, and wrap each pound in foil. These you defrost when you want tacos, spaghetti, sloppy joes, or some casserole that you’re making up as you go according to what you have leftover in your fridge. Just think, you’ve gotten your stove all greasy just once instead of 5 times. And did you know — frozen browned hamburger defrosts a lot quicker than frozen raw hamburger which is a plus when you have several starving children that want to eat NOW.
Pick up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts in bulk too. Grill these with a minimum of seasonings, cool, and chop into bite-size pieces. Toss them in freezer bags and toss those bags in the freezer. Got a chicken pasta, or chicken salad, or chicken noodle soup to make? Reach in the freezer and grab yourself a handful of chicken that’s ready to go. This works great with bacon too. Add your cooked, crumbled, and frozen bacon to salads, beans, or scrambled eggs.
When you make soup, or a casserole, or any meal that can be frozen, double the recipe. We all know how time consuming and messy (well, for me it’s messy) it is to make lasagna, why not make two and only clean your kitchen once? Sometimes I just make 2 smaller ones without doubling the recipe. Soup is easy to make a large amount of. You can divide soup into any smaller amounts you want, usually depending on what size containers you have available. Save on freezer space by using zipper freezer bags. Just be sure to double the bags.
Here’s a chance to really use your food processor before you have to break it down and wash all the parts. Chop up onions, green peppers, carrots, or whatever else you can think of that freeze well (not potatoes) and that you like to add to a casserole, soup, or dish. Put them in small baggies inside a bigger freezer bag.
Soak your dry beans overnight, rinse, and put them in serving size freezer bags. Next time you want to make beans or bean soup, you’ve already got the first step out of the way. The beans won’t take as long to cook either. If you want to take it one step further you can cook the beans before you put them in the freezer.
A big tip is to always label your freezer bags or storage containers. Trust me, you will not remember what is in the bag and the food won’t look exactly like it did when you put it in the bag.
These tips won’t give you complete meals to pull out of your freezer every day for a month; they’re more like guidelines to shortening your steps to a quickly prepared meal. The benefits are fewer trips down fast food alley, fewer dollars spent on food, and more nutritious meals for your family.
Peggy Baron cooks with her kids in Colorado, and runs http://www.cookinkids.com which is a website devoted to helping other parents and kids have fun together in the kitchen. Peggy is the editor of the popular Cookin’ Kids Newsletter. Each bi-monthly newsletter has fun facts, recipes, jokes, games, cooking safety, and cooking terms wrapped around a different theme.
Ready to get started freezer cooking yourself? Get a copy of my Freezer Cooking Made Simple guide and get started today.
Thanks for sharing this really great article. Even after over 40 years of homemaking, there is a lot I don’t know. I never thought about freezing soaked beans. I always have a few bags of browned ground beef in my freezer but I don’t add any onions, just some salt & pepper. In my area, Costco has the best price on good ground beef unless there is a sale somewhere. This is where having a kitchen scale comes in handy and you can usually find one at a thrift store or yard sale. After that, some freezer bags and a Sharpie are all you need.
Great newsletter, as always.
Doesn’t the foil rip in the freezer? Will freezer bags work for meat? How does freezer paper do? Thanks for your help, I’m very new at this.
I like to wrap my meats in plastic then I wrap in foil. or I wrap serving in plactic wrap and put in to freezer bags. This cut down on freezer burn. I freeze sliced squash and berries on cookie sheets first then when frozen tranfer to ziplot bags.
what i do is i buy hammburger in the big pack and use my scale and after i amdone with the bag i put it back in the freezer but i have a spot were all the hammberger bags go and the same with the chicken
Thanks for the article. I feel better that I am not the only one who is a drop-out!
The problem I have is that the guys won’t eat leftovers and especially don’t like food after its been frozen. I’ve had to throw out a lot of frozen meals because they don’t like it. The tips you gave are great! I do some of it already, but there are some other great ideas here I just didn’t think about.
For me, what seems to work best, is freezing surplus and pre-prepped fruits and veggies instead of entire cooked recipes. (Note bene: I’m cooking just for me and the tropical fish. I also belong to a great CSA, so I’m freezing produce to use later in the year. For me, the two biggest concerns are not having to continually throw out stuff that’s gone bad, and being able to cook stuff fairly quickly.) I also freeze homemade applesauce, tomato sauce, grated cheeses, and a variety of pre-sliced homemade breads. It helps a lot that I’ve already been my own prep cook, and don’t have to spend a lot of time slicing when I haul it home from work and am making dinner. A lot of time, when I’m cooking, I find that all or most of the ingredients have come out of the freezer, but the recipe itself is fresh, i.e. my ratatouille is now called freezer2E. : )
I buy chickens when on sale, usually 7-8 at a time. I cut up the chickens, freezing breasts (I cut mine into three pieces so they cook quicker)three pcs. to a pkg., wings all together for hot wings, legs 4 to a pkg., thighs 8 to a pkg. for curry in the crockpot, and wings and freeze all of those in meal size groups. The rest (incl. any pcs. your family won’t eat individually) throw in a large pot of water with seasonings of choice and boil for about an hour – hour 1/2. Strip the usable meat off those pcs. and freeze for soup or chicken & rice, then put the bones back in the pot and boil for another 30 – 45 minutes. Strain the bones out, cool the broth so you can get the fat off the top and freeze the broth in small containers. Then you have broth available whenever you want it either. Then your chicken is prepped for quite a few meals at a time, you got it when it was on sale and the mess and yuck of cutting up chicken only has to happen every few weeks.
I agree! Once a month cooking is just WAY too much time for me to be spending in the kitchen on my day off from work! I was just trading one job for another! Instead I also buy in bulk and I have a wonderful thing called a crock pot which I use daily! I just throw whatever I am having for dinner into it and cook it on low and when I come home from work voila it’s just sitting there waiting for me! Clean ups a breeze too and whatever I have left over comes with me to work the next day! Now that is saving time and money!!!! No investing in tons of freezer bags only to have them slip out of the freezer every time you open it! Also we had our electricity go out and the thought of all that food going to waste was a concern (as it is anyway) Not to mention a big waste of my time had the food gone bad! Yup I agree once a month cooking is NOT for me! Sounds convenient until you actually do it then you wonder just what you got yourself into! Some things are not as frugal as we first think!
I’ve never tried to cook more than a week at a time. My freezer isn’t that big and once a week cooking fits better into my time and financial budget. However, I do like having the onions, peppers, etc. already chopped and that mess already cleaned up when I’m cooking my evening meal.
Though I use some recipes from OMC and Frozen Assets, I prefer Make-a-Mix to OMC, hands down. I’ve never done a full-blown OMC session because of pain issues–I just can’t stand that long. Peg Baron cooks the way I do, unless I have something major going on. Twice when I had about six weeks notice before major surgery I filled my freezer and refrigerator to maximum capacity by doing two or three mini-prep days a week, making no more than two or three items at a time. I froze things like Ground Turkey mix with peppers, onions and garlic, Turkey Meatballs, Chicken Breast Chunks, Quiches, Calzones, Vegetable Soup, Macaroni and Cheese, Vegetarian Chili, and Spaghetti Sauce. I made a freezer inventory so my husband could mark off items as he took them out, and gave him index cards with instructions for quick meals he could make with the food in the freezer. For instance, I make stroganoff from scratch, but his index cards simplified it and had him heat meatballs or turkey mix with cream of mushroom soup and canned mushrooms, then stir in sour cream and serve over egg noodles or rice. Friends from church brought in food right after I got out of the hospital, but because my freezer was full I didn’t have to stress about our meals for about three months while I was zonked on pain meds and not allowed to lean over or lift anything heavier than my water glass.
I,m a senior and I live alone, except for my little dog. Also, I,m on a fairly strict budget, so I have to do some of these things. I don,t have room, living in a small apartment for a large freezer, so I have a small, apartment size one and when I,m craving something I wouldn,t ordinarily fix for one person, I cook it anyway and freeze smaller portions of it in quart baggies or small containers. Things such as Ham and Beans, Lasagna, Spagetti,Beef and Noodles or Chicken and noodles. I even make up taco meat ahead of time and freeze it. Then I can either do Tacos or fix a taco salad or Mexican casserole.
Great suggestions! Thanks for that. I do a lot of it already, especially because I have a big garden and prefer freezing to canning in most cases, but hadn’t thought of all your great suggestions! Super! I’m not a omc drop-out. I never tried it because I like cooking too much to make it into a once-a-month chore and not do it any other time. Somehow it seemed like it would take the fun out of it!! Plus, sometimes fresh is just better than frozen.
These are REALLY great suggestions! I knew the one about the ground hamburger, but had not thought of doing that with chicken, peppers, beans, etc. In the coming year, I plan to use my slow-ccoker more as I hope to be back to work. Sometimes even though I am not working it is an ordeal to prepare a fresh, healthy homemade dinner. Dirtying up the kitchen (it is very small) less times for more food makes perfect sense!
I love all your ideas. some I have been doing for a long time and it sure
helps. I sometime buy a couple of those precooked roasters when they are
on sale then I cut the chicken up in meal size and then what is left on
the bone I throw in a pot and make wonderful broth >then I put it in the
ref. to cool take the fat off and the chicken off bone add a can of cream
of chicken soup and use flour trotillas cut in dumpling size for dumpling
taste like I work all day, also I sometime make soup .
I’ve had success with freezing pasta dishes, meatloaf and meatballs, but I prefer freezing the components (carrots, celery, onions, bell peppers, cooked ground beef, diced/shredded cooked chicken) and then simply pulling out of the freezer when cooking.
I like your suggestion of putting the items in freezer bags and then putting inside one larger freezer bag rather than having tons of little bags all over the freezer. My husband has fallen in love with those ziploc freezer bags that come with the little air pump. He’s like a little boy with a new toy on Sundays when I’m preparing my freezer items haha.
I’m so glad to hear of someone else who “works” like I do! I frankly, don’t have the attention span to cook a bunch of meals at one time, and I enjoy cooking at the end of the day – it’s my thinking time. That being said, I’m all for making two labor intensive casseroles at one time or while chopping up some onions and peppers, I notice they are at their peak and I won’t be able to use them – or will be using them soon – I’ll chop them all up and put them in the fridge or freezer. I like to make larger batches of bread and fruit loaves or muffins and freezing those. And I hate paying for chicken stock so when I poach chicken breasts, I cheat and add a few low sodium bullion cubes and an onion then freeze the broth for later. My guys are not big left over fans, so I tend to try for planned leftovers. Like only serving half of a chicken and using the rest in a casserole later in the week or the same with a large beef roast – beef tips one day, soup later in the week.
Great article, OMC didn’t work for me either. But I am loving some of these tips, I already do a few, excited to do more
This is a great article. I buy beef roasts on sale and have them ground at the stores. Then I make a dozen or more 1/4 lb patties and flash freeze them (place in them in the freezer on a cookie sheet until hard). After they are frozen solid, I take them off the cookie sheet and drop them in a good quality freezer bag. If I have a recipe that requires 1 lb ground beef, I take out 4, and, of course, we thaw and grill them when we want a juicy burger.
I also can seasoned ground beef and meat balls when I make a bulk meat buy for spaghetti, lasagna, Sloppy Joes,, noodles with meatballs, etc.
I also flash freeze chiciken breasts as well as can turkey and chicken. Makes cooking so easy.
Most people think that fresh tomatoes can’t be frozen. Not true! One year we had a bumper crop and after canning tomatoes, sauce, juice and catsup we still had more tomatoes that we knew what to do with. I just washed and dried whole tomatoes and laid them on a cookie sheet until they were frozen solid and then Put them into freezer bags. They were great for cooking, the skins had to be slipped off first. The best part was to take one from the freezer and let it partially thaw. Then cut into bitesize pieces, sprinkle on a little salt and enjoy.
My question is what is the best defrost method?