Freezer Cooking

So I have been dabbling in freezer cooking for almost a year now and have been meaning to share time after time so I am finally going to share a little secret that makes my life SO much easier! And, honestly I am glad that I have waited until now because I have been able to streamline my method and really know what works for me and my family!

So yesterday over the course of five hours I cooked and portioned out 10 breakfasts, 7 dinners, 5 lunches, prepped 4 more meals, prepped various veggies and sides, and made 2 desserts!

Whew! I am done for a while!

So here is what we have for the next couple of weeks.

My Completed Meals include:

 Lunch and Dinner:

Spaghetti, Confetti Chicken, Teriyaki Chicken Alfredo, BBQ Chicken, Shish-kabobs, Baked Chicken and Rice, Taco Soup, Chili, Lentil Soup. (the Chili and Lentil Soup were actually cooked a couple of weeks earlier.)

Breakfast:

Biscuit and Gravy, Breakfast Casserole, Sausage, and Bacon.

My Prepped Meals include:

Stir-fry, Hamburgers, Red Beans and Rice, Corned Beef, Steak.

(Hamburgers were created a couple of weeks ago too!

Prepped Veggies:

Diced onion, diced green onion, diced bell pepper, broccoli, and seasoned sliced squash.

Other Preps:

Sliced cheese and fruit.

Overwhelmed yet??? Don't be!!!

I have been freezer cooking for about a year now and this is the first time that I have done anything on this scale. (Mostly because I was learning and our freezer in our old house was just too tiny!)

Okay, so where to start!?! For me the best place to start was what do I cook regularly?

After I have a list of meals ready I create my grocery list and go shopping and then get ready for the fun to start.

 Kitchen Prep:

 The first thing that I like to do is to make sure everything in my kitchen is put away because I need all of the space I can get!

Sorting:

 Next, I unpack and sort my groceries. I like to separate mine by meats, veggies, and then any miscellaneous ingredients I might use during the cooking process. 

For me I have found this pairs down the number of dishes I use and the amount of time I use not walking back and forth to the pantry or digging things out of the refrigerator.

Veggie Prep:

Next I spend about 10-15 minutes slicing up all of my veggies. 

This way they are prepped for what ever meals you are going to cook for today and then you can freeze the rest in separate containers to toss in meals at a later time. 

This has been a huge time and money saver for me! 

With our family only having two people in it I use to have a problem with buying bell peppers and onion and only using half of them before they go bad. 

 Meat Prep:

Then I do meat prep. This is the time when no one else is allowed into my kitchen, because it honestly gets a little crazy!

First, I bake all of my bacon. Who know you could bake bacon right! Just place it in the oven on 325 until it reaches the crispiness that you like. For me it is around 20 minutes, I think! I would recommend having some sort of grate to keep the bacon out of the grease and of course something to catch the grease. I actually using my cooling rack (the ones for cookies and such) they work great!

While the bacon is baking I prep my other meats.

To do this I think back to what kind of meals am I going to make.

For example if I am making spaghetti and tacos I decide how much grown beef I want to brown and toss it in the pan and cook it all at once. If I am going to make hamburgers too I make sure to go ahead and divide that meat to set aside.

With chicken I decide what meals I want to use diced, sliced, or shredded chicken for and then prep accordingly.

Generally if I am slicing chicken it is to make fried chicken so I place it sliced, uncooked in a bag.

For shredded chicken I boil it on medium for about an hour with 5 season meat tenderizer. the Meat tenderizer makes your house smell yummy. Garlic salt works too.

Then for diced chicken I would usually dice it and freeze it in meal size portions to use when I was ready to cook. But today I went ahead and cooked it! Much better idea!

I also prep and cook sausage for breakfast. Making patties or just cooking it in little chunks for breakfast casserole or biscuit and gravy.

After the meat is prepped and/or cooked set a side to cool.

This is the part of the process where I would normally pack everything into containers and be done but this time I wanted to finish the whole sha-bang. So now I started meal assembly. Which is WAY easier with all your meats cooked and veggies diced!

So, I just started cooking. I use all the burners at once and the oven too.

Once everything has been cooked let it stand in cool to room temperature before packing in containers and freezing.

This go around I divided all of our meals into dinner portions, a lunch portion for the hubs, and a lunch portion for me. ( We are trying to eat lunch out less often so this makes it easy and plus you can mix and match meals so that you aren't eating the same meal two days in a row.)

I also portion out all of my breakfasts in individual servings so there is less reheating done.

A new tactic I am trying for prepped meals is to write on the outside of the plastic bag what needs to be done to complete the meal. This way if I want the hubs to cook dinner I don't have to tell him what to do it is already there!

A trick for meals that are being stored in ziplock bags, freeze them lying flat for the first 24 hours then you can place them up right in the freezer and they will take up less space!

And TADA! Here is my lovely freezer! And I am done cooking for a while!

Here are a few other tid-bits that I couldn't quite figure out where to place in the blog but wanted to share. 

A few of my favorite extra things to prep and freeze are: veggies, bacon, and cheese. Cheese freezes really well if you slice it before hand. If you freeze it first I have been told it crumbles easily. Also, when I freeze bacon I cut it in half so it is the perfect size to add a slice to a sandwich or crumble a piece up in a baked potato. 

In addition to everything I do in the freezer I also like to spend a few minutes slicing up various fruits to put in the fridge. I have found this makes it easier to snack healthy!

So this is just what I found works for our little family and our schedule. Other ways I have heard of people using freezer cooking is to cook in bulk whenever they cook and store it to eat later. I think that this is a great idea I just don't have a freezer big enough to support this lifestyle. 

Good luck and happy cooking!