Tips Making Freezer Meals

 

It’s the time for new resolutions, for making new goals including plans to save time and organize so here are some tips making freezer meals. 

 

It's the time for new resolutions, for making new goals including plans to save time and organize so here are some tips making freezer meals. 

 

You may have some ambitious goals lined up for exercising more, transitioning to a healthy Keto diet, for keeping a cleaner house, or for getting to bed earlier.

However, we all have only 24 hours in one day. And of course we want to eat healthier which includes making food from scratch.

How do we do it all?

I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to manage everyone’s day.

But I love to have some meals in my freezer that I can pull out in the morning or the night before to defrost and then bake in the evening.  

Here are some tips making freezer meals which will help you have more time to achieve your goals!

There are many ways that you can go about preparing freezer meals.  

 

Two Ways I have made Freezer Meals

  1. I used to take a whole day and bake about 10 meals with a friend. Many recipes created 2 meals; but if they did not, we would just double the recipe.  At the end of the day, we both had 10 different meals to freeze!  Our kids had fun playing, and we had fun talking.  
  2. Now that friend has moved away, and I usually just make double (or triple) one recipe, and we eat some for dinner and I freeze some of it for later.

There are some recipes that you already have that freeze easily.  It is great to use recipes you already use and love because you know your family will eat them.  

 

The Easiest Meals to Freeze

  1. Meatloaf and meatballs
  2. Chili
  3. Many noodle dishes or enchilada type dishes will freeze very well.  If you freeze noodles, sometimes the recipe will say to have the noodles a little firm still before you freeze them as they will cook more when you warm them up.   
  4. Most breads, rolls, and muffins can also be frozen.  

If you don’t have time to cook the whole meal, you can cook up hamburg and chicken and freeze them in one pound increments ready for casseroles or tacos or chili and soups.  You can also season the meat and freeze it.  This saves so much prep time.

 

Tips Making Freezer Meals

  1. Be well prepared.  Write down the ingredients you need for each meal and what you need to buy.  I try to do this a couple of weeks before I do a big freezer cooking day and get those ingredients on sale.
  2. If you are making several meals at one time, cook all the beef or chicken at one time for all your meals and then split it up.  
  3. Have containers the meals can be frozen in.  I used containers for many of my meals or I left them in the pans.  My friend had a small freezer and transferred many products to freezer Ziploc bags.
  4. Label each item that you stick in your freezer with name and the date you put it in the freezer.  So it is important to have a list of what you made and when you put it in the freezer and cross out the item when you used it.  Many people have this list on the front of their freezer.
  5. Cool before freezing.  If you baked something and then freeze it, it needs to cool before you can freeze it.
  6. Give yourself time to make it.  It will take a little longer to double or triple a recipe; and it will take all day to do several meals.  Later when you don’t have time to cook at all,  you will be so thankful!
  7. Have a plan for little children.  The nice thing about cooking with my friend is that it was a play date for our kids so they were occupied.  We would plan our lunch for them ahead of time.  If you are by yourself, plan a nap time to do some cooking or let them watch a movie for some of the time.
  8. Make some space in your freezer ahead of time for your meals.

 

Where to find Freezer Meal Recipes

  1. Pinterest has so many recipes!  
  2. When I first started cooking freezer meals about 9 years ago,  I didn’t have a computer or internet. (Can you imagine that!)  I subscribed to Quick Cooking magazine as it had 2-3 freezer recipes in every magazine.  
  3. Now I think those magazines are called Simple & Delicious.  Taste of Home is the producer of these magazines.  
  4. Money Saving Mom has a section on her blog with printables and recipes for freezer cooking. If you make freezer meals, what are your favorites?  

 

I’m always looking for new Meal Solutions and would love to hear about your favorite meals and your Tips Making Freezer Meals.

 

Related reading; 5 Steps to an Awesome Frozen Birthday Cake for your Child, Flaky Butter Pie Crust and Easy Danish Pastry Dough Recipe.

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