If you find yourself without the time and/or energy to cook every night, you might want to try preparing meals to go straight in the freezer. Then meal time becomes as simple as reheat and eat.
Once A Month Cooking is possible, there are just a few things to keep in mind. Whether you’re cooking extra to store in your freezer for another day, or cooking up straight-to-freezer meals to last the week; OrganizedHome have a great collection of do’s and don’t.
Here’s just the tips for Soup:
- Store the components, not the soup. Too often, frozen soups don’t satisfy. Overcooked vegetables, gritty stock and stringy meat are a table turn-off. Instead of freezing completed soups, freeze components: a container of chicken broth, freezer bag of just-cooked chicken in single meal portions. To assemble, sauté onions, celery and carrots in a skillet, and add the freezer broth. Stir in leftover cooked rice. Add the meat, heat–and serve a soup that stands the test of time.
- Just say “No!” to potatoes. Whether in soup, stew or casserole, frozen potatoes don’t cut the mustard. Package freezer stew before adding potato. When you reheat, stir in cold, cubed, peeled baked potato from last night’s dinner. Freezer friendly potato substitutes include barley and slightly undercooked pasta.
- Store now, thicken later. Yes, you can freeze thickened stews, but do you want to? Cornstarch and flour-based gravies can separate after freezing, and never seem to have quite the right texture. Better, freeze the meal first and add thickening after thawing.
Sneak Up on Freezer Cooking – [OrganizedHome]
Also check out their Freezer Cooking Guide which includes a sample game plan to cooking only once a month.
Feed the Freezer! Complete Freezer Cooking Guide – [OrganizedHome]
I have used the mega menu mailer at http://www.savingdinner.com to provide recipes and meal plans for once-a-month cooking, and it’s great. The packet (which you download for a fee) includes a shopping list, prep instructions, meal making instructions, and suggested side items for 20 meals. It definately makes the whole process much easier.
[...] Web site OrganizedHome lays out how to cook and freeze a month’s worth of meals in a single cooking session. OrganizedHome suggests that you’ll probably need part of a day to do all of your shopping and one whole day to do all of your cooking, so don’t expect to whip together a month of food without any effort. However, after dedicating 1.5 days or so, you shouldn’t need to do any heavy lifting in the kitchen for the rest of the month. If you lament the hour or so every night you spend cooking dinner, this method – while requiring some hefty organization skills and a roomy freezer – seems like a potentially great idea. If you’ve had experience cooking ahead and freezing your meals (whether a month’s-worth or less), tell us how it worked for you in the comments. — Adam Pash Feed the Freezer! Complete Freezer Cooking Guide [OrganizedHome via Lifehack.org] [...]
If you find yourself without the time and/or energy to cook every night, you might want to try preparing meals to go straight in the freezer. Then meal t.