Freezer Meals, It’s What’s for Dinner!
Cooking from home can not only be better for your health, but it can also be one of the best ways to save money on food. However, cooking has never been something I enjoy, especially when it came to working full-time, going to school, raising children, and/or homeschooling children. It was always added stress of deciding what to make, if I had everything on hand, and if I had time to get it made before dinner time. When I found freezer cooking, I quickly fell in love. I can spend a little time on a weekend preparing meals for the upcoming week or month freeing up more time to spend with my family. I also found that the weekends can be a great time to get the family involved with this process.
Below are a few sites that have helped me do better at preparing home-cooked meals for my family.
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The Family Freezer is one of my favorite places to get freezer cooking recipes as my family has enjoyed most of these recipes we have tried. Kelly from The Family Freezer has some videos and classes uploaded to YouTube that you can follow and get great tips on. She will also host live YouTube classes that you can follow along with and get access to the recipes she uses in the classes. I have learned so much from her.
The Family Freezer also offers a paid, one-time fee access to her website with all of her recipes and books. On her Freezer Meal Pro website, you can create your own customized meal plans and shopping lists. I love her YouTube videos, classes, and her website.
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Six Sister’s Stuff is all about finding ways to get dinner on the table fast with common pantry ingredients. Instant pot recipes are something they heavily focus on, and who doesn’t love their instant pot? They also have lots of slow cooker and freezer meal recipes with tips and tricks to make your recipes the best they can be.
The Six Sister’s Stuff YouTube channel offers lots of videos you can follow along with giving helpful information and tips.
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Once a Month Meals was one of the first websites I found with the freezer cooking concept. They offer a wide variety of recipes that you can get for free on their website, but they do offer a lot more recipes, customization, and printable shopping list and instructions with their paid membership.
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Cook Once, Eat all Week is another great resource for recipes and ideas devoted to preparing meals ahead of time. With this plan, you focus on making a protein, a veggie, and a starch (or another veggie) in bulk, and then turn these into three totally different dinners for the week. These dinners are different enough, so you do not feel like you are eating the same thing all week.
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MOMables was another recipe and meal planning site I’ve used in the past. I love Laura’s recipes, and how she focuses on clean, healthy meals, easy to follow meal plans, and tips for age-appropriate cooking tasks to help get children involved in the process.
Laura also offers a paid subscription to weekly meal plans with shopping lists and prepping instructions so you can free up more of your time during the week.
Prepear.com is another site I love. You can not only search and save new recipe ideas, but you can add your own favorite recipes, create your own online cookbooks, and print your customized meal plans and shopping lists. This is where I save all my favorite recipes for easy access, and if needed, I can pull them up on any device or print them off in an easy-to-read format.
Methods of Freezer Cooking
Once-a-Month Cooking - This is when you plan and prepare meals for a month in advance. This can definitely save you money, but this method is not suggested if you are new to freezer cooking as it takes lots of planning and devotion for an entire day or weekend of preparing meals. This can easily burn someone out on freezer cooking altogether. It will also require more free space in the freezer to accommodate all these meals. However, if this is something you can do, it can save you a lot of time and money in the long run. This method is not something I’ve been able to get to yet.
Cooking once a week or twice a month - This has been a little more my speed. I usually try to prepare 2-3 meals ahead of time per week or prepare 4-6 meals for a two-week period. This allows me to have ready-to-go meals on hand as well as allow for a couple of days of leftovers and account for evenings when we are eating elsewhere. Sometimes, I will also double some of these freezer meals, so it can make more than the 2-3 or 4-6 meals, but that depends if it is a tried-and-true recipe I know my family likes and if I have room in the freezer for the extra meals.
“Freeze 1 - Eat 1” or “Freeze 2 - Eat 1” - This is a slow, less stressful way to build a freezer meal inventory. Sometimes, it can be more cost effective to make more servings of a meal that you are already preparing and then freeze the extras. With this method, you will double or triple the serving amount you need and freeze what you are not eating now. For example, if you are making chili for four people, you will buy ingredients to make enough chili for 8 or 12 people, and then you can freeze the extra servings to enjoy later in the month or the following month.
With all of these methods, they can save you trips to the grocery store, have fewer days preparing meals, potentially fewer dishes to clean, and have less temptation to rely on fast foods. This could save on your gas and grocery budget, eating out budget, water bill, and potentially give you more of your time back. This is why I fell in love with freezer cooking.
Freezer cooking is easier than you might think to accomplish, however, the biggest and most important step for a successful freezer cooking session is to plan.
It’s best to start by making a list of your favorite meals. You will probably be more pleased if you start with meals you know you like, instead of trying all new recipes and potentially being disappointed for the entire month, or however long you chose to cook for. Try familiar recipes for you and your family that would be freezer-friendly, and then you can add a few new recipes to the mix. This way, if you do get disappointed, you’ll have a familiar dinner you can look forward to the following night.
Decide on your menu and plan your meals on a calendar to help ensure you do not have duplicates or similar meals back-to-back.
After you plan what you will make, gather recipes for those meals, and READ through each recipe deciding a stopping point on each recipe for your bulk cooking day. This is important as some items do not freeze well. You can prepare your meals up to or skip over some of those ingredients and add them later when you’re ready to cook your meal. Be sure to highlight or make a note of these ingredients for when you actually make the meal. Several of the links above will already have these notes listed on their recipes for you.
Create a grocery list with any needed supplies you might need for your cooking day to include freezer containers, a sharpie for writing instructions on containers, and cleaning supplies needed to clean up from your freezer cooking day.
Freezer Cooking Day Tips
Day Before
Prep your freezer by getting rid of old or out-of-date items.
This can help ensure you will have the room needed for the meals you are going to make.
Turn down your freezer temperature by 10 degrees.
If you will be putting lots of new meals in your freezer, this could help ensure your freezer stays at a safe temperature when you start filling it with your prepared meals. Once your freezer meals are fully frozen, you can then return your freezer temperature back to the normal range.
Morning of or Right Before Cooking
Prep your kitchen by getting out any supplies you will use.
Fill your sink with warm soapy water ready for dirty dishes.
Be sure your trash is emptied and easily accessible.
Other Tips
Be sure to label freezer bags before you start filling them with your ingredients
It can sometimes be hard to write or get labels to stick to your bags once they have cold ingredients inside as condensation will start to build up on the bags.
Chop vegetables first.
Prepare all your bags or dishes with all other ingredients first before adding any of the meats.
This can help keep cross-contamination down and prevent your meats from being out for longer periods of time. After you have all other ingredients divided into your meal-prepping containers, then you can take out your meats, cut them, and divide them into the containers.
I am always interested in learning more, so please let me know if you have any other suggestions for freezer cooking and/or meal preparation, or if you have a favorite go-to easy recipe that you would like to share.
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Click the button below to see other ideas about how to lower or keep your food budget down.
