I just got a freezer. Because usually, when I get home, I’m not too interested in cooking.
Today I made a big beef stew, a huge chilli, spinach soup and curried parsnip soup.
Any other ideas for good things to cook and freeze?
Lasagnas and baked Zitis and things like that freeze and reheat pretty well.
Macaroni and Cheese
Burritos (single wrapped in plastic)
Enchiladas
Anything in a casserole dish
Spaghetti, meatballs work well in the freezer.
Oh, I freeze all sorts of things, some cooked and some partway through the cooking process. At the moment, my freezer has
an uncooked meatloaf(with the sauce in a ziptop bag wrapped with it in several layers of foil) My girl’s gluten intolerant, so I substituted crushed corn based cereal and garlic powder for the garlic croutons. Worked out fine.
a few Dump Chickenrecipes, uncooked (Dump Chicken is chicken parts and seasonings and sauce ingredients that you “dump” into a Crock Pot, oven dish or bag for storage. When chicken parts are on sale, I just line up freezer bags and make a bunch of dinners at once)
some Boursin Stuffed Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breasts, uncooked,
one pan of Polenta Lasagne With Feta and Kale, assembled but not baked
three quart sized bags (1 dinner each) of tacomeat, fully cooked,
a bag of lentil curry, fully cooked,
a batch of Burgundy Sauced Meat Balls, fully cooked,
two bags of Masala Chicken, fully cooked,
three bags of plain white rice, fully cooked,
three bags of this awesome rice pilaf I made with dried cranberries, apricots, cherries and “dried berries” (it was a clean-out-the-pantry dish) pecans, sunflower seeds, onions and white, brown and wild rices cooked in real chicken stock. It’s OMG good, but it took the better part of 2 hours to make, so I made a quadruple batch and froze most of it in 4 serving bags.
I haven’t quite gotten up to Once A Month Cooking, but I’m discovering it’s usually not much more work to make a double or triple batch of something when I do cook, and then I’ve got one or two frozen meals for nights when I just don’t have the time or energy or I want to focus on making some spectacular time consuming other dish to go with what I have frozen.
Bread, either homemade or store-bought, freezes very well. Soups and stews almost always store well, particularly stocks.