Today’s topic is Cooking Ahead aka Freezing Dinner.
I know there’s a lot of people that go online, and you see people make all these Crock-Pot things to freeze in bags, and you spend the whole day cooking. The thing is, especially if you don’t like to cook, you don’t want to spend an entire day cooking. You need to do it a little at a time, and just kind of make it a little extra as you go along. That’s how I do it. And I call it my “make one, make two.” If you’re making one, you might as well make double and freeze the other half.
This involves freezing food. Hopefully, you have a little freezer space. The beauty of that is that your dinner’s already done for the next time.
Let’s take a lasagna for example. Spend a few more minutes, buy a little more ingredients, and make the other one at the same time. Freeze it. Then you know you always have dinner saved for later. Pull it out in the morning of a day you don’t have time to prep dinner. It’s nice to know have already got dinner handled for very little advance work.
Whenever possible, I never put a just one roast in the Crockpot. I cook two every single time. Because if I’m going through all that trouble why not have enough for a future quick meal? When I cook a roast, we then have that night’s roast dinner, and then I take all the leftovers and divide into a couple different packages of beef. I also save all the cooking stock/gravy for a soup or as a base for stroganoff.
This way you’re not spending your entire Sunday or Saturday making and prepping all those meals. It’s easier to do it this way, and you’re not eating the same thing all the time. I always have different kinds meat in the freezer that’s already cooked.
My big thing is having a variety. I think it makes dinner more interesting. I will never cook spaghetti for dinner and eat it all week. I’ll make a bunch of spaghetti sauce, have spaghetti and then freeze the rest of the sauce for other things. I’m a big one for making chili, stew, certain soups, and then freezing the other half. And then I know I’ve got dinner for later on. It’s kind of a comfort for me. Cooking ahead.
There is a variety of ways to save the food that you’re planning to freeze. One thing, if you’re doing a food that’s not in liquid you could use a vacuum packer.
And I got to tell you that the vacuum packer is amazing. It just sucks all the air out of it, and then it seals it up, and the air can’t get in it. It doesn’t get freezer burn. It’s lovely. I go through periods of using it and not using it because I’m too lazy to pull it out of the pantry. If I really think what I’m freezing is pretty precious, and I’m not going to use it right away, then I will use the vacuum packer.
For example, we like honey baked ham. That ham is pretty precious, but I’m not going to eat it the next week, or for a few weeks. I’m going to be saving it for a little while. I’ll take all my slices and vacuum pack it. Ziplocs are so good now. That’s what I generally use.
Another thing that I do, which is getting to be a pretty big habit of mine, is that I put stuff on a cookie sheet and quick freeze it. Like pancakes. My husband likes to make a bunch of pancakes. Then afterwards you have extra pancakes, and if you don’t reheat them right away, freeze them. I take a piece of parchment paper or even just a plain cookie sheet, and I lay them all out individually, (that way they don’t stick together), and I’ll put them in the freezer for a couple of hours and they freeze solid. And then I take them out, gather them all up, throw them in a Ziploc bag, and you can actually take that pancake and put it in the toaster. Or you can heat it up whatever way you’re going to heat it.
I actually started doing this because years ago I bought a bunch of these very rare berries. They’re called a Olallieberries. And we can only get them two weeks a year out here, they’re kind of like a blackberry. I bought a bunch, and I spread them all out on this cookie sheet, and I froze them. Then when they were all frozen, I threw them in a bag. I made a berry pie later.
I’ve been doing that with a lot of stuff now. I make this really cheesy garlic bread, and then I spread it out on a cookie sheet after it’s already cooked. It freezes and then I throw it back in the Ziploc bag and later just take them out and reheat them. I made Chicken Parmesan the other day, I did it with that. When you just freeze the pieces individually, then it’s easier because then they don’t stick all together.
Check for an upcoming blog about how the texture may be effected by freezing and what food I don’t recommend freezing.
Well I hope I inspired you to cook double when possible. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me knowing I have an easy dinner that I can use when I need it!
Have fun and think double!