Frozen meal ideas?

[Andy M.]

Turando:

I would suggest you cook any casseroles before freezing.

Potatoes do not freeze well raw.

[auntdot]

Turando, we do this for some folks who cannot easily cook for themselves and almost everything freezes well. We then fill their freezer with a number of different food (five or six main disher). We usually do not decide on all of the recipes until we walk around their local BJ's or Costco.

Just for two, we love baked ziti and veal (or chicken) parm - freezes just fine.

One other suggestion, and it might help if your freezer is not all that big and after a while you may become tired of the same old.

The crock pot. The prep is minimal for many dishes and one can usually do it all in less than 15 minutes in the morning and voila, seven hours later or so you have a tasty and nutritious meal.

Just an additional thought.

Take care and God bless for you and the baby.

[candelbc]

Turando,
Congratuations on your new arrival. My 7 month old has changed my life!

My wife and are slightly picky about frozen meals. Instead of freezing an entire meal, we mass cook certain things that make preparing meals easier. We too have a FoodSaver, and what we primarily use it for is freezing cooked beef (in 1 pound increments) and grilled Chicken (in 2 piece increments).

What we do with it from there is up to us. What is great is that I can make a meal of Taco's in minutes.

Remember that with the Foodsaver, you can put an entire bag of frozen cooked beef into boiling water and it will not only thaw the meat, but it will also raise it to the right temperature. All without getting your beef or chicken frozen.

In my opinion, this use of the Foodsaver rarely gets any exposure. Especially with just how handy it is...

Good luck, and I hope I could help just a little bit. This gives you a lot more options with 1/2 the effort. Plus you can save time and possibly money by buying beef or chicken in bulk.

-Brad

[Caine]

What I normally do is, on a Saturday or Sunday, determine approximately how many meals my main dinner, be it spaghetti with meatballs and sausage, blacken red fish with red beans and rice, roast beef or pork with mashed potatoes and gravy, or whatever, will make. Then I make sure to cook enough rice or potoatoes, and enough green or yellow vegetables, for that many meals.

I then load up these containers I have with three course meals. Rubbermaid sells them, but I have the generic version that I bought from the 99¢ Only store, that look like this --->


Once I fill all the containers, or use up all the food, which ever comes first, I stack them in the freezer. Come Monday morning, I toss one into my briefcase and head off to work. By lunch time it's pretty well thawed and I can nuke it in the microwave to eating temperature. In fact, I just happen to have one in my desk drawer thawing out right now. It's Conchigilie with tomato sauce in the main compartment with one Italian sausage link one of the smaller compartments and a meat ball in the other.

[GotGarlic]

Another tip - unless you have lots of casserole and baking dishes to hold all these things, you can line a dish with aluminum foil, using a piece large enough to completely cover the food, put the meal in the lined dish, cover with more foil, and freeze. Once frozen, you can take the meal out of the dish, add another layer of foil, and put back in the freezer.

When it's time to cook it, put the meal in the dish you froze it in and let it defrost in the fridge before baking. Or, I have sometimes put the dish in the oven at the same time I turn the oven on to preheat, and by the time it's up to temperature, the dish has "acclimated" to the heated oven. Bake it a little longer than usual and save yourself the thawing step.

Hope this is helpful.