I need your advice!!
I am getting ready to do "once a month cooking" or freezer meals with my mom.
I need any ideas or advice you may have.
Does anyone know of a website that has recipes or do's and don'ts?
I am unclear what recipes can or can't be frozen. What should be cooked before it goes to the freezer or what should be cooked after??
For example, I did a rice casserole once... cooked it, froze it and then reheated it. It was fine with the exception of the rice. -It was really dry.
Help! any input or ideas will help.
Cherise
8 comments:
I'm wanting to do the same thing before I start back to school on the 20th. What little experience I have with freezer meals, I've found that using pasta and rice can be tricky. Chicken Enchiladas freeze well because you don't really have to cook them (other than the chicken) before freezing them. If you do pasta, make sure you undercook it (obviously). I'd love to hear what you end up making. I need ideas too! GOod luck!
I haven't heard of "once a month cooking" it sounds like you just make a bunch of dinners. freeze them and then dont have to cook for a while?
Hi Cherise,
I started doing freezer meals when Cheyenne was still dancing. And I still make them now. It is a great way to bless my family. The books I use are: Frozen Assets by Deborah Taylor-Hough, and Holly Clegg's Trim & Terrific Freezer Friendly Meals. One idea that Deborah shares is taking your favorite meatloaf recipe and makeing meatballs, salisbury steak and meatloaf all freezer friendly and then she shares different ways to prepare them after you defrost. Also she said to start out by doubling your dinner recipe and freezing the other portion. I like to have chicken soup frozen for times when my family is sick or I am sick. It is a great comfort for me. This Christmas I froze some of the treats that people brought over for Family Home Evening Treats or snacks later. It is good to have FHE treats in the freezer all the time. Cookies freeze well. And at bare minimum Sunday dinner or Wednesday night meals for those who are in YM/YW. It just makes life so easy.
I freeze my pasta sauces and thaw them in a crockpot on low before I leave for work and then I just cook the noodles as needed. Noodles don't take long to cook so that's great.
Pasta just doesn't freeze well. I have a Tortilla Casserole that freezes well. For some reason, mexican dishes are great freezer meals. Good luck!
Hi I just stumbled across your blog looking for something else but I thought I would respond to your post. I have only done the once a month cooking in december it was my first time and I did it with 1 friend. it was a compleete sucess we loved it! last month we did chicken chalupas, with chicken cream of chicken soup (which if you do it in bulk you can save alot of money and not have MSG in it if you make your own, it was really easy just google it :) they also had sour cream and cheese and green onion and olives, I make my own tortillias with oil as the fat. needless to say this was the first meal gone even though we made 4 9x13 pans for our fam!
the other things we did last month were
Freezer chicken pot pie (cooks country has a freezer recipe for this you really have to add alot more liquid)
Sloppy Joes
Chicken Noodle Soup (noodles freeze fin in soup)
White bean and ham soup another to die for dish!
Chicken pockets (a cream cheese chicken and spinach or green onion filling in a roll frozen before cooking and toped with cream or ch/mush soup and sour cream.
Lazy day lasagana, don't cook the noodles.
Beef stew, really tasty if you make thin and add cornstarch when heating up, makes it nice and creamy, also wonderful topped with sour cream!
this month we are doing sweet and sour chicken, (making the rice when serving time)
stirfry with orange chicken
meat balls
homemade mac and cheese
scalloped ham and potatoes
chicken enchaladas/ chalupas
Ham and bean soup
I've never done freezer meals because I have the same questions about it as you and just haven't taken the time to research it. However, tonight I ran across this website from a friend's blog.
www.freezehappy.com
Let us know how it all turns out.
Thank you all soo much for your comments and suggestions! I made close to 80 meals and will be set for awhile. I learned a lot. If you have any questions let me know.
PS I did some meals with noodles and they worked awesome! You just have to cook them -very- adante (sp?) I even reheated to test one. The noodles were perfect and not the slightest bit over cooked.
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